


every time is the last time

by ganymede_elegy



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Female Friendships, Idiots in Love, Mild Smut, Minor Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Minor Robb Stark/Jeyne Westerling, Sisters, Teen Pregnancy, a lot of making out in cars, attempted sexual assault only, but I put the archive warning in just in case, the sansa/arya/margaery friendship no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25135621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ganymede_elegy/pseuds/ganymede_elegy
Summary: It starts like this.She's furious, anger hazing her mind and making her reckless. Reckless enough that she turns and leans across the center console and presses her lips to his. It's not a good kiss. Her lips are pursed tight, as tense as she is, and he's also tense, but she doesn't break it off and soon his eighteen year old boy brain seems to take over and he's kissing her back.Ok, maybe it starts earlier than that.Maybe it starts when an eight year old Robb brings home a skinny, sullen boy after little league hockey one day. He's quiet, but Robb loves him and from that day on, Jon Snow becomes a constant figure in her life.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Sansa Stark & Margaery Tyrell
Comments: 354
Kudos: 736





	1. Part One

It starts like this.

She's furious, anger hazing her mind and making her reckless. Reckless enough that she turns and leans across the center console and presses her lips to his. It's not a _good_ kiss. Her lips are pursed tight, as tense as she is, and he's also tense, but she doesn't break it off and soon his eighteen year old boy brain seems to take over and he's kissing her back.

Ok, maybe it starts earlier than that.

Maybe it starts when an eight year old Robb brings home a skinny, sullen boy after little league hockey one day. He's quiet, but Robb loves him and from that day on, Jon Snow becomes a constant figure in her life.

Not that he's a _big_ part of her life. Robb is obsessed with Jon in a way that makes Sansa roll her eyes, and Arya follows Robb's example. Even Bran and little Rickon want his attention when he's over. Jon is quiet and unassuming but Sansa can admit (to herself, not to anyone else) that he has an energy about him that makes you take notice. Not right away, but when you notice him, you _notice him_. He's a constant part of her life but not a big one. Sansa mostly ignores him; they have nothing in common and his silences tend to annoy her. He's always dressed in black and he's unfailingly polite and as she gets older she finds it more and more infuriating.

Maybe it starts the day she and Robb and her mom are arguing in the kitchen over who's going to pick her up from cheer practice. Margaery gets a ride from Loras and they live in the opposite direction so Sansa feels weird asking them to do it. Normally her mom would have no problem driving to the school, except cheer practice falls on Tuesdays and Thursdays this year and Thursdays are mom and dad's date night. It's always been that way. Sansa thinks its romantic that after all these years and five kids, her parents still make time for themselves.

Well, it would be romantic if it didn't leave her ride-less after practice because Robb is being an absolute _ass_ about picking her up. He's huffing and whining about it, all “but _mom_ , I'd either have to wait around after school or come home and drive _all the way back_ ”. Like it's the biggest deal in the world. “Why don't you just make Sansa get her license? She's almost seventeen! Why am I being punished because she keeps failing the test?”

Maybe it starts when Jon, who's sitting quietly at the kitchen counter, pretending he isn't there while the Starks argue, lifts his head up and says “I could do it”.

All three of them turn and stare at him; Catelyn is wary, Robb joyous, and Sansa relieved.

“You're sure?” her mom asks, sounding unsure herself.

It's not that Catelyn Stark _hates_ Jon. But Jon's mom is poor and had him when she was barely sixteen and in Winterfell there's a sort of stigma attached to that. And as much as Sansa loves her mom, Catelyn can be a bit... old fashioned when it comes to these sorts of things. Catelyn feeds Jon and drives him places with Robb and lets him sleep over, but there's always a bit of a disconnect between the sort of boys she wants Robb to hang out with (rich, well connected, two parents) and the best friend he's chosen (the boy who's sneakers are always on the verge of falling apart and who's clothes are always hand me down and who's hockey equipment is just a tad bit beat up.)

“Yeah,” Jon says with a shrug. “Hockey's on the same days, we'll be done around the same time, it'd be no hassle.”

He doesn't have to elaborate that likely he'd be on his way to the Stark house after practice anyway, whether Sansa was in the car with him or not.

“Thanks, man,” Robb sighs and that seems to settle it.

* * *

That Tuesday goes by without a hitch.

She gets out of cheer practice and kisses Margaery on the cheek and watches her bounce off towards the car where Loras is waiting. Then she scans the people milling around outside – all the clubs and sports practices that have let out – until she spots him; a void of black clothing and hair in a sea of colorful people. He's got his hockey bag slung over one shoulder and his school bag over the other and he's frowning down at his phone and he's got helmet hair that he apparently didn't bother to fix.

She sighs and rolls her eyes and makes her way over to him. He notices her approach and nods to her and then points out into the parking lot. “I'm parked that way.”

They walk and it's then that Sansa remembers one of Jon's weird quirks: he always parks out in the middle of nowhere. Sure enough, his old Jeep is parked with no other cars around it and she stops herself from making a comment about it, because he wouldn't fight back with her, he'd just shrug and stay silent. It's annoying.

The drive home is fine and when they get to the house, she forgets to thank him and goes upstairs to start her homework.

Thursday is a different story.

She'd had a fight with Arya last night that had been near-explosive and they'd both ended up getting themselves grounded. Which meant that Sansa had to cancel her date with Joffrey this weekend. He hadn't been happy (and she'd been a little put off by how petulant he'd been. He'd been nothing but sweet and gallant with her since he started flirting with her over the summer and this turn of his personality left a sour taste in her mouth). She'd gotten a C+ on her chem test and had forgotten last night, in her fight with Arya, to do her High Valyrian homework that was due today.

On top of that, she'd landed wrong in one of her tumbles in practice and twisted her ankle and she'd gotten chewed out by Coach Mordane.

Suffice to say, by the time she sees Jon's stupid, sullen face waiting for her, she's in a bad mood. Her ankle hurts and she _hates_ Arya and now she might hate Joffrey and she definitely hates Robb for making her ride home with stupid, sullen Jon Snow. She doesn't say a word to him and they walk to his car and the fact that it's parked so far away doesn't help her anger and she's trying not to limp because she doesn't want Jon asking if she's ok and being all _nice_.

She slams her car door shut and Jon definitely senses something wrong but doesn't say anything and at least she'll give him that. On the way back home her anger twists into self pity and she wants to cry. It's then that she remembers her period will be starting in a few days and she curses her hormones and she curses Arya and Joffrey and Robb and Coach Mordane and even Margaery for landing her tumble perfectly.

“Can you stop at a drug store?” she asks as they're driving down Main. He nods and pulls into the next CVS he sees and parks in the absolute back of the lot and she pivots again from self pity back to anger. She doesn't say anything, though, just gets out and slams the door and doesn't wait to see if he follows her.

He doesn't.

She gets into the CVS and buys a wrap for her ankle (Coach Mordane said it was just twisted, not actually sprained, but Sansa has never passed up an opportunity to milk sympathy from her parents and get out of chores). She also buys the biggest bag of Twix she can find, along with some tampons and Midol because she can't remember how much of either she has left at home.

The cashier is a man in his forties, and he gives her a condescending smirk as he rings up her tampons and chocolate.

_Yeah, yeah, yeah_ , she thinks furiously. _I'm a girl. I get my period. I want chocolate when I get it. Fuck you._

Men who think periods are funny and use _you're hormonal_ to make her feel stupid and too emotional piss her off. Robb does it sometimes. He thinks it's funny to say _someone's got her period_ any time Sansa cries or gets upset. Even when she doesn't have her period. It makes Theon laugh. Jon doesn't laugh but right now he doesn't get a pass because he's still a boy and Sansa has decided that in this moment, she's mad at all men.

She takes her bag and her eighty foot long receipt and storms back outside. Jon's still in his Jeep parked at the ass end of the lot and with every painful step she takes on her twisted ankle, her fury mounts higher and higher.

She slams the car door again and Jon lets out an exasperated huff and says “could you not?” When she looks at him, indignant, he gestures to his door. “I know this isn't fancy but I'd rather you not break my car.”

It _isn't_ fancy. It's old. It was old when Jon's mom bought it for him for his sixteenth birthday. It's already beat up and crappy and she's seen Jon working on the car in the Stark driveway countless times, watching YouTube videos on how to fix the problems himself because he can't really afford to take it to the shop.

She doesn't say sorry. She should. It's his car and she knows he's proud of it. She should say sorry because Jon really isn't the problem here. She should say sorry, but instead she says “why do you always park so far away? It's stupid.”

Jon stares at her for a second before sighing. He shrugs and says something about how if the Jeep breaks down or won't start back up, he'd rather it be out of the way, and it's such a _Jon_ thing to say. Only Jon would see his car breaking down as an inconvenience to other people. Only Jon would make his every day life more of a hassle _just in case_. Only Jon would make himself walk farther so he never has to bother strangers in some hypothetical scenario where his car won't start.

She stares at him in his stupid, sullen face and she's so angry.

She's angry about everything and she knows that it's just been a bad day and it's partially hormones and that she's overreacting but right now she wants to punish someone, _anyone_. She's angry and it makes her reckless enough to lean over the center console and press her lips to his.

When he finally begins kissing her back, she relaxes her lips a bit and then suddenly the kiss is nice. It's good. She's had a few kisses: Joffrey kissed her right before school started, and she kissed Margaery on a dare one time last year, and she's jokingly kissed Loras even though he's gay. But this is different. His lips are soft and she doesn't really know what she's doing, but he seems to. His hand comes up and cups the back of her neck and he tilts his head a different way and it's _good_.

It's a chaste kiss, though. No tongue, no wandering hands. Just his left hand cupping the back of her head and her hand gripping his shoulder for stability as she leans across the console. When she pulls away, his hand drops immediately from her and he doesn't try to stop her at all.

She doesn't say anything as she sits back in her seat and buckles herself in, and Jon doesn't say anything as he starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot. They don't say anything as he drives her home and when they get there, he mumbles something about needing to head home even though he always hangs out with Robb.

When she gets up to her room, she flops onto her bed and tries to think about why she kissed him. Out of spite? Was she trying to punish him for being so... well for just being so _Jon_. Was she trying to punish Robb and Arya by kissing the boy they're both so protective over and obsessed with? Was she trying to spite Joffrey for being a jerk today?

She finds she doesn't know the answer and goes to take a shower to wash the day off of her. Tomorrow, she'll start fresh.

* * *

Avoiding Jon isn't hard. It's kind of what she does anyway. Not consciously, but when he's over, she tends to not be in the same room because Arya and Theon like to make her the butt of their jokes. Jon doesn't, but he sometimes laughs and he definitely doesn't stop them from doing it. Robb tries to protest a bit, but it's usually while he's laughing at whatever the joke was. So basically, when that little group is together, she tends to be somewhere else.

Not that she can't be petty and mean to them back (she can, and she knows that her words aren't said jokingly like Theon's or casually like Arya's. No, when Sansa says mean things, it's pointed and cutting and cruel. She tries not to be this way and so she finds that avoiding the situation is best.)

So for the next five days she only catches glimpses of Jon and she definitely ignores the fact that when they do cross paths, he stares at her. Luckily Robb is kind of an idiot and doesn't notice at all.

Tuesday is the real problem. She'll have to be in the car with Jon, alone, for the full twenty minute drive from the school to the house. She wonders if she should text him and say Marg is giving her a ride home. Marg would, but there's something in Sansa that rebels against the idea. It feels like running away. It feels like admitting the kiss meant something.

It didn't.

It meant nothing.

So on Tuesday they get out of practice (Coach Mordane letting her _take it easy_ because of her ankle that didn't even really hurt anymore), and Sansa resolutely walks up to Jon's car and gets in the passenger side. She can tell he wants to say something, but he doesn't and she finds that this annoys her.

Everything Jon does annoys her. He's so sullen and pouty and woe-is-me and dresses in all black and lets people walk all over him and he stuck with hockey even after Robb quit and he's _good_ at hockey and he's got nice muscles because of it (not that she looked over the summer when they went swimming, absolutely not) and he's smart and he reads and tries really really hard to make good grades and he's good at math and he always helps her when she messes up something on her computer and he works part time at the grocery store as a shelver and he loves his mom and he's polite to everyone and he helps clean up after dinner when it's not even his house and he plays street hockey with Arya and teaches little Rickon how to hold the stick and he talks about alternate universes with Bran and he listens to terrible whiny emo boy music and he's so very, very annoying.

He's _so_ annoying. She hates him.

He's about to start the car up when she does it again. She turns to him and leans over the center console, over his bottle of Coke that pokes her in the side, and kisses him again. This time he doesn't hesitate and he kisses her back and his lips are just as soft as she remembers and his hand is gentle when he brings it up to hold her head and its _good_.

She suddenly remembers that even parked as far away as they are, they're still in the school parking lot where a dozen or so sports and clubs have let out and there's kids and parents everywhere. She pulls away and he doesn't stop her and instead goes to start the car.

The idea comes to her as they pass the local park and she quietly tells him to pull in there. He hesitates for only a brief moment before following her directions and he parks in the back of the lot. There's not a lot of cars here because it's a Tuesday and even though it's still only September, they're in the North and the days are already getting shorter. They still don't talk as she leans over and kisses him again.

It's different this time. More intentional. She thinks she can detect a bit more urgency in his kiss, a bit more pressure applied, hand just a little tighter around the back of her neck. But he doesn't do anything else and it's her that finally parts her lips and darts her tongue out. She's not sure what she's doing, to be honest. The only time she'd ever kissed with tongue is when Joffrey shoved his down her throat over the summer. She hadn't really known what to do, just let him do it. It had felt weird.

But now, Jon won't move things along and it seems up to her to do it so she runs her tongue, tentatively, hesitantly, across his bottom lip and she's both pleased and surprised when there's a rumbling noise of appreciation from him. His mouth opens and his tongue meets hers and she sighs because this... this is what it should be like. Whatever she'd done with Joffrey had been _nothing_ like this.

In all the stories she's read of handsome princes and damsels in distress, it's always the maiden's _heart_ that flutters. So Sansa is a little unnerved when, in addition to some heart-fluttering, she feels heat pool between her legs (and she may be naive but she's not stupid and she knows what it is. She's just a little surprised, is all, because she's never felt it before and none of her stories have ever described it. Florian and Jonquil for sure never talked about the specifics of sex. All her teen romance novels stuck to heart-fluttering and TV shows faded to black).

She's not sure how long the kiss goes on, but at some point she moves her hand from his shoulder to his hair and the dark curls are softer than she would've thought. She grips his hair and tugs lightly and this makes him groan into her mouth, and she's a little embarrassed by the mewling sound she makes in response.

His other hand has just made it's way to her hip (in a very PG kind of way, no groping or trying to move under her shirt at all), when his phone in the cup holder buzzes. The sound is so loud in the relative silence of the car that they jump apart guiltily, like whoever just texted Jon is standing right outside the Jeep watching them.

Jon picks up his phone and Sansa is relieved to see that his hands are shaking a little and that she's not the only one shaken by the kiss and the adrenaline jolt of the phone buzzing. He unlocks it and opens the text and she can read from the side that it's from Robb.

_u guys get lost_

Jon sighs and rubs a hand over his face before responding.

_Sorry, had to do some laps after practice, coach was a dick today. Be there in 10._

If Sansa was in her right mind, she'd be appropriately shocked at how easily the lie slipped from his fingers. Jon isn't a liar. Except apparently now he is, for her. The thought both thrills and upsets her.

He puts his phone down and mumbles something about getting her home and she can only let out a breathy _ok_ and then they're back on the road.

When they get to the Stark house, he leaves the car running and she bites at her lip. “It'll be weird if you don't come in,” she says, voice low and uncertain. “Especially since you didn't last week.”

He seems to agree with her, that it'll be weird if he just books it after dropping her off twice in a row. It'll be weird. Suspicious.

They seem to have silently agreed that whatever is happening between them, it's between them. No one, especially Robb, can know. So he turns off the car and they both get out and go inside and Sansa calls out an “I'm home!” before running up the stairs to her room. She can vaguely hear Jon talking to the rest of her family and then his footsteps on the stairs down to the basement where Robb is likely playing video games with Theon.

She changes out of her cheer uniform and makes sure she looks decent. She thinks she does. Are her lips redder than usual? She doesn't think so, but she can't be a hundred percent sure. She feels like the evidence of what she and Jon did is all over her, glowing marks where his skin touched hers. Lips on her lips. Handprint on the back of her neck. On her hip.

* * *

No one notices a thing at dinner and she and Jon don't look at each other the whole time but this isn't new and so no one notices. When they're done, Jon helps her mom bring in the dishes to the kitchen while no one else does and Sansa has the sudden urge to kiss him again. He shouldn't be helping with the dishes when Robb won't even do it. There are five Stark children and Sansa is the only one who helps her mom, except when Jon is there. He isn't even a Stark and he helps her mom more than the rest of them. (She recognizes, in some small part of her brain, that Jon does a lot of things for her mom, like he's trying his hardest to make her like him and it breaks Sansa's heart a little, because he never quite gets the approval from Catelyn that he's looking for).

She's rinsing dishes in the sink and her mom has gone back into the dining room and Jon has just deposited a stack of plates next to her and she's suddenly reckless again because she turns and leans up and kisses him, right there in the kitchen where anyone could walk in. He's surprised and he pulls back, eyes wide, and looks over his shoulder at the doorway to the dining room. He looks back at her, eyes still comically wide, and she can't suppress the giggle that escapes her at his expression.

He doesn't get to say anything because Catelyn's back and Sansa watches Jon's ears turn red and he hustles out of the kitchen. Her mother doesn't notice a thing and Sansa wonders, if Jon were any other boy, would her mom have noticed? If Jon were Joffrey, would her mom have noticed the tension and his embarrassment and the way he practically ran out of the room? Although, she muses, Joffrey isn't the type of boy to get embarrassed. He's the type of boy that thinks kissing a girl is his right.

The thought sits uncomfortably in Sansa's chest. It's something she thinks she's always known about Joffrey but had never really allowed herself to acknowledge because he'd been so charming. Joffrey wouldn't keep his hands at neck and hip, never moving, never groping. Joffrey wouldn't wait for her to be ready to take their kiss further. He'd already proven that when he'd kissed her and immediately pushed his tongue into her mouth. Joffrey wouldn't offer to drive her home every Tuesday and Thursday just to keep the peace between Catelyn and Robb.

It sits uncomfortably in her chest that Joffrey is the type of boy her mom would approve of and Jon is, decidedly, not.

* * *

It continues on like this.

They're lucky that Robb has started seeing Wynafryd Manderly. He's out a lot now and can't hang out with Jon and on Thursdays so are her parents and this means no one is really waiting for Sansa to get home from practice.

They park in empty parking lots of abandoned stores and at the park. As the weather turns colder, less and less people are at the park, playing with their kids or walking the trails, and Sansa and Jon take full advantage of this.

He always waits for her to make the first move. She tells him where to park. She initiates the kiss. She's the one who, about two weeks into this routine, clumsily maneuvers herself over the center console and into his lap. He's not opposed to this move and fumbles down the side of the car seat for a lever and he finds it and they both gasp when the seat abruptly slides back and jolts to a stop. She has more room now, the steering wheel not digging into her back, and she grins at him and he grins too and then her mouth is back on his.

She thinks she's gotten the hang of this kissing thing. Jon is patient and he doesn't seem to mind that she doesn't have as much experience as he does.

(She doesn't want to think about his experience, but she knows he dated Alys Karstark last year and she remembers Robb making a joke about some Dornish girl he'd lost his virginity to when he'd gone down to visit his father in Sunspear the summer before that. She's not sure about the virginity thing, if it was just a joke or real, but she remembers Jon coming back from that trip different than he'd been when he left. Back then she'd put it down to it being the longest amount of time he'd ever spent with his shitty father, three whole months, but maybe it was because he lost his virginity? Maybe he'd met and fallen in love with a Dornish girl and had to leave her at the end of the summer? Maybe he was still in love with the Dornish girl. Maybe he'd loved Alys Karstark. Maybe he still loves Alys Karstark. Sansa finds she very much does not want to think about this).

He's patient with her and he never pushes her to do anything but kiss. She might feel a little self-conscious about this, like maybe he doesn't _want_ to do anything more with her, but now that she's moved to sitting on his lap, she can feel the proof that he does.

She finds she likes straddling him more than just sitting sideways in his lap. He seems to like it more, too.

* * *

She sees him talking to Alys Karstark in the hallway one day and she knows they remained friends after they broke up but she finds herself irrationally annoyed. Alys is on the hockey team with Jon (she'd petitioned the school to let girls on the team because they hadn't before, and she won. Sansa begrudgingly acknowledges that Alys Karstark is _cool_.)

He doesn't see Sansa and Alys is laughing at something he said and this annoys her. Jon isn't funny. Alys shouldn't be laughing. And Jon's giving a little half smile and that's wrong, too. Jon doesn't smile.

She keeps walking to fifth period High Valyrian and does what she does best when she doesn't like a piece of information: she ignores it.

* * *

It's a cold Thursday in early October and she's still in her cheer uniform. She'd been wearing a coat over it but that had come off in the fumbling of moving his car seat back and her swinging her leg over his. She should be cold, except she's very much not. She feels hot and flushed, his mouth moving against hers, his tongue sliding against hers, his hands on her hips, his thumbs pressing into her hipbones, the way he pants for breath when they break apart for air, the way he groans from deep in his chest when they start again, the hard length of him pressed into her thigh (they both ignore this when it's happened the other weeks. There's a sort of crystalline innocence about what they do in his car and for some reason, acknowledging his erection would shatter that, so they don't).

But today she's hot and restless and it's not enough to just be kissing him. There's an ache between her legs and she _knows_ what that is. She knows. She knows that she could probably make it better by touching herself (something she's never actually done, even in the privacy of her own room, under her covers). She knows that Jon could definitely make it better by touching her, but she doesn't know how to ask for it. She's nervous that breaking this invisible barrier will be a nonstop tumble into sex and she knows she isn't ready for that yet. All she knows is that she's restless and she needs more.

She finds her hips moving of their own accord, pressing into Jon's, centering herself over his erection and grinding down in a way she finds very satisfying. He breaks their kiss and hisses out a breath, like all the air has been forced out of his lungs. His eyes are on hers, his normally gray irises black in the shadows of the car. His gaze makes her feel even hotter and she continues to grind into him and then his hands on her hips are helping her, moving her against him and his own hips are thrusting gently up in a rhythm that he creates and it feels like nothing she's ever felt before. He shifts and then suddenly he's hitting a different place between her legs, higher up and she lets out a moan that would be embarrassing if she was thinking straight. He seems to realize he's found the right spot and he thrusts up again, now holding her hips still.

She feels something building in her, a tension coiling in the pit of her stomach, fire racing through her veins, heart pounding so loud she wonders how no one has found them here.

  
  
“Jon,” she whispers, voice coming out cracked and unsteady. “Jon, _please_.” She doesn't know what she's asking for, really. She just doesn't want him to stop, she doesn't want him to _ever_ stop, this pressure, the tightening in the pit of her stomach, the sharp burst of pleasure every time he hits that spot (her clit, she knows what it is, she's not stupid, she's had sex ed, but it's always been a concept before, a clinical term, something she's never touched herself because it seemed gross and unladylike).

But now, in this car, with Jon, it's a _revelation._

“Fuck,” she hears him whisper. “Fuck, Sansa, fuck.” He's never been the best with words and she finds she doesn't care and she finds she understands him completely with just that one word. Because _yes_ , _fuck,_ she thinks as the tension in her body starts to feel unbearable.

She's gripping at his shoulder blades, nails digging in through his shirt, her face buried in his shoulder and she can't control the sounds coming from her throat and she winds higher, higher, higher, until suddenly everything shatters and she feels like she's flying, like she's floating and she's vaguely aware of Jon saying something and his hips still moving against hers, faster and more frantic, but her senses seem muffled and dull as she floats back down to earth.

When it's over, when she comes back to herself, Jon's hands are still in a death grip on her hips but they're not moving anymore. His breath is coming out in ragged pants and his head is tilted back against the head rest, eyes closed tight, mouth parted slightly as he tries to get control over his breathing.

She feels giddy, endorphins rushing through her and making her feel light as air. She presses her face into the side of his neck and a breathy laugh breaks free from her and then Jon's head is tilting down and she can't see him but she can _hear_ the frown in his voice when he says “something funny?” which only makes her start to giggle more, and then he's telling her to stop laughing, trying to sound indignant, but he's laughing too, the sound vibrating through his chest into hers where she's slumped against him. It's while they're both trying to compose themselves that she notices he's no longer hard and she feels herself flush from her chest all the way up to the roots of her hair when she realizes he must have come too. That she made him come. Her. Sansa.

Jon gently pulls her face up to look at him and his smile fades and he's searching her eyes for something. She thinks that, even though they never spent a lot of time together, she still knows him well after all these years and she can see the guilt and self-loathing start to creep into his expression.

“Was that too much?” he says, voice low. “Was that ok?”

She hates his guilt complex and she wants to rewind to thirty seconds ago when they were laughing dizzily together. She's never been in this situation before and she isn't quite sure how she's supposed to handle it, but what she does know is that she wants that look on Jon's face to go away and she wants him to smile again and so she gives him her biggest, brightest smile and then leans forward and kisses him. “That was wonderful” she whispers against his lips and she feels him relax slightly under her.

* * *

He doesn't come inside when they get to the Stark house and she feels her face flush again as she glances down at the wet patch on his jeans. She can't tell if it's from her or from him and the thought makes a shiver run down her spine.

“Bye,” she says shyly and he he gives her a small lopsided smile and says “bye” back. She gets into the house and yells “I'm home!” at Uncle Benjen, who's watching Arya, Rickon, and Bran, and she dashes up the stairs to change. She peels her underwear off and finds herself flushing even harder when she sees the evidence of what they did.

She'll have to do her own laundry this week, she thinks. She's too embarrassed by the idea that her mom might find her soaked underwear and figure out she's been up to something.

* * *

It's near the end of October that he first uses his mouth on her. She's on his lap and they're going at it like usual when he whispers about wanting to try something and does she trust him? She does, and that's how she finds herself in the back seat of the Jeep, half propped up against the door, Jon kneeling awkwardly on the floor and she thinks there's no way he could be comfortable like that, she's not even sure how he fit except she thinks he moved the driver seat up as far as it could go to make room, but still.

She feels uncertain and uncomfortable and it's only because Jon had asked her _do you trust me_ and she'd said yes that she doesn't back out of whatever this is. She almost tells him to stop when he reaches under her cheer skirt and begins to pull at the waistband of her underwear. He's kneeling with his face practically between her legs and now he's taking off her underwear and he's going to _see her_. She's never been naked in front of him. He's never even taken her shirt off. He's touched her breasts over the shirt and lately he's been sliding his hands under, but she's never been _naked_.

Her heart is fluttering and not in the nice way but she doesn't stop him because she _does_ trust him. She finds she trusts him more than almost anyone else. She thinks she trusts him even more than she does Robb.

Gods, she does _not_ want to think about Robb right now.

All of her doubt flies out of her head the minute he presses a kiss to her thigh and then his tongue touches her and she looses all sense.

When it's over and she's panting and limp against the car seat, he grins at her from between her legs and she lifts a hand to swat at his head and tells him to stop being so smug. He plants an exaggeratedly loud kiss on her inner thigh and groans as he gets off his knees. She sees that he's hard but when she offers to help him with that, he shakes his head and kisses her on the lips (there's a strange, tangy taste that she realizes is _her_ ) and tells her he's ok.

* * *

“Ok, you _have_ to tell me what's up,” Marg says with a sigh and leans against the locker next to Sansa's.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“What I mean is that you've been prancing around the hallways like you're in a Disney movie,” Marg laughs. “I don't think I've ever seen you this giddy.”

Sansa flushes and knows _exactly_ why she's being like that, but she can't tell Marg. She and Jon have an understanding. They don't tell anyone. And Marg wouldn't tell, but it's not fair for Sansa to tell _her_ best friend when Jon can't tell _his_. Because Jon's best friend is her brother and that is absolutely, positively out of the question.

“I dunno,” she sighs, shutting her locker and they start to head to history. “Maybe because I realized that Joffrey was the worst and I'm glad I got away from him before I could do anything stupid?”

It's not a _wrong_ answer.

When she and Jon had started their thing, when she realized what kissing could be like, she'd backed off from Joffrey. She'd stopped laughing at his dumb jokes and flirting back. He'd become petulant with the lack of attention and then, when he asked her out on a date and she gently turned him down, he'd become downright mean. He'd scoffed at her and called her a prude and laughed at her with his friends.

When she'd first started hanging out with Joffrey over the summer, Robb hadn't been thrilled and Arya had scrunched up her nose and called him a whiny prick. Sansa had turned her nose up at them and told them Joffrey was a prince and that they both were jealous.

She had never been happier to be proven wrong in her life. At least, proven wrong _before_ anything too terrible could happen. She could handle a few insults from him and his lackeys. She shudders to think what would have happened if they'd continued on, if they'd gone on dates and she'd let him do what she lets Jon do. Sansa is very, very certain that she would be having a very different experience with Joffrey than she is with Jon and she will take all the gloating from Robb and Arya that she deserves. She'll eat her humble pie.

Marg sighs and rolls her eyes. “What a dick,” she says. “I can't believe how quick he turned, all cause you said no to going to the movies.” Joffrey is in the hall on the way to class, hanging out with Sandor Clegane and Meryn Trant, the three of them leaning against the lockers. “Speaking of,” Marg says, louder, so that everyone around them can definitely hear, “I feel like the way he reacted is _totally_ indicative of how small his penis is.”

Joffrey turns an ugly shade of purple and Sansa mutters an _oh my gods_ and rushes off to class with Margaery trailing behind, laughing loudly.

* * *

“Hilarious!” Robb hoots, slapping his hand against his thigh as Sansa rolls her eyes.

It's a Wednesday after school and luckily, mom is upstairs and not in the kitchen with them. Wynafryd had just finished telling Robb, Jon, and Theon about Margaery's comment in the hall today. Wyn must have seen it happen and she's giggling, and Marg is there too, bowing to her audience and accepting their laughter like a stage actress accepting applause.

“Told you,” Arya says around a mouthful of chips and Sansa sighs.

“Yes, you did, congratulations,” she says dryly, and Arya doesn't seem to know what to do with a response that isn't attacking back.

Sansa is avoiding looking at Jon during all of this. She's already embarrassed that she fell for Joffrey's flattery and falseness to begin with, and it's worse that it's being talked about in front of the boy who's head had been between her legs less than a week ago. She finds she wants, very desperately, for Jon to think well of her. For Jon to think she's smart and mature and makes good decisions and the whole Joffrey business is none of that.

“You should've seen his face,” Marg is saying to the group, theatrical as always, shining in their attention. “I don't think I've ever seen a human being turn that color.”

Sansa would like to leave this conversation, but she can't without being obvious about it, so she just bears it in relative silence.

* * *

Jon is fidgety.

Sansa doesn't know what's wrong but he's twitchy and weird as they get into the car the next day. She has a sinking feeling it's about Joffrey. Jon's finally seen her for the stupid little girl she is and he doesn't want to hurt her feelings but he also doesn't want to touch her anymore.

(Her logic doesn't seem to remember that Jon has known her for nearly a decade and has watched her have multiple meltdowns and temper tantrums. He'd watched her stubbornly tell Robb that she _could too_ ride a skateboard and then promptly fall on her ass three summers ago. He'd watched her accidentally set her hair on fire when she leaned over a Christmas candle when she'd been eleven and then watched her cry about her ruined hair for hours. He'd witnessed countless petty fights between her and Arya. If there is anyone outside of her family on this planet that knows just how dumb and childish she can be, it's Jon Snow. The Joffrey stuff wouldn't be a surprise to him. But again, this logic does not enter her brain at all).

They get to the park and by now, early November, they're the only car here. He turns the engine off because he doesn't have the money to waste gas and they usually create their own heat. She initiates the kiss, determined to get them back on track, but she can tell he's not into it.

She pulls back because she refuses to kiss someone who clearly doesn't want to kiss her and he seems to come out a bit of his daze and he sighs.

“Sorry, I'm a little distracted,” he says, running a hand down his face like he's exhausted.

And the way he says it, it's not directed at her. She notices then that he's tense and pale and she frowns.

“What's wrong,” she asks, reaching a hand out to grab his. He looks down at their joined hands and gives it a little squeeze and any thought that this was about Joffrey flies out the window.

He hesitates.

Jon doesn't like telling people his problems. The amount of times Sansa has seen her dad offer to take Jon's car to the shop, or buy him a part, or offer to get him new skates when his get old and worn out is uncountable. Jon refuses, every time. He'll eat dinner at their house and he'll get rides when they're taking Robb somewhere, but he won't ever take money and he won't ever complain about things. He never complains about not having the best hockey equipment. He never complains that his mom doesn't take him on fancy vacations like the Starks do. He never complains about having to work part time when none of his peers have to. He never complains when he ends up the de-facto babysitter to Arya, Bran, and Rickon because Sansa is off being social and Robb can't be bothered to actually take care of them when left in charge. Jon doesn't complain.

She waits him out, though, resisting the urge to fill the silence. Finally, he tells her that his coach let him know that college recruiters would be coming to his next hockey game. Which is tomorrow.

Sansa can _feel_ the dread radiating off him. Jon is a good player. She's never really paid attention or gone to games, but she's heard people talk and she's pretty sure he's the best on their team. He's always been naturally athletic, running around outside with Robb and Arya, seemingly able to pick up any sport with relative ease. But he also _works_ for it. He practices constantly and he's always eating healthier options than whatever Robb and Theon are shoving into their mouths. She knows Jon's mom doesn't have the money for college and so Jon has been working hard for years to be better than everyone else, just to give him some sort of chance at a scholarship. Impressing a scout could lead to a hockey scholarship and she can feel the weight of it on Jon's shoulders.

She wishes his coach hadn't said anything. He'd probably been trying to help – she knows, from listening to Robb and Jon and even her dad talk, that Coach Mormont has become a sort of father figure to Jon (not that Jon would ever admit it, of course). She knows he's Coach Mormont's favorite, and not just because he's their star player. She's sure Coach Mormont was just trying to help, but she wishes he'd never said anything because now Jon will spend the next twenty-four hours freaking out about this and he'll be so anxious during the game that he'll make dumb mistakes.

“You'll be great,” she says, and she knows it's lame. She doesn't know what to say, though, to make him understand. She doesn't know what to say to make him realize that he's wonderful and that he deserves to get a scholarship and these recruiters would be morons if they didn't love him.

_She loves him._

The thought comes out of nowhere and rocks her back in her seat, but Jon is too preoccupied to notice. Which is good, because the last thing he needs right now is to deal with her freaking out.

She's not freaking out.

She's fine.

It's totally cool and normal to realize you're in love with your brother's best friend that you fool around with in a car a couple times a week and no one even knows you're doing it and you're not dating and he definitely doesn't feel the same way. Totally normal. Totally cool.

She takes a deep breath and pushes those thoughts out of her head. Right now, Jon needs her and she can deal with her feelings later.

She climbs over the center console and sits in his lap (sideways, she isn't here for _that_ right now) and she puts her arms around him and rests her head on his shoulder and asks what she can do to make it better.

“I'm fine,” he says in a tone of voice that says he's not at all fine.

“It's ok to be nervous,” she says, rubbing one of her hands up and down his arm. “You wouldn't be normal if you weren't nervous. But they'd be dumb not to pick you.” He lets out a huff of a laugh that tells her he doesn't believe her at all. “I'll tell them that, too,” she says in her best Sansa-is-right, haughty princess voice. “I'll go to that game and find them and tell them they're idiots.”

She won't. He knows it and she knows it but it makes him laugh all the same.

“Would you, now?” he asks, smile on his face and she feels triumphant.

“Yes,” she says, still with her exaggerated know it all voice. “And then if they were still being stupid, I'd go right to the Dean of whatever school they're from and give them a piece of my mind.”

He's laughing again and some of the tension has eased out of him and she's never been more proud of anything in her entire life.

“You'll do great,” she says, this time a whisper into his shoulder. His arms tighten around her and they sit like that for a long time and talk about everything and nothing at all.

They talk about why he doesn't like sushi and what he'd like to study in college and her upcoming High Valyrian project and Arya's fencing lessons and how dumb Robb can be sometimes and if they want to live in Winterfell when they're older or travel the world and Bran's new obsession with robots and how Jon hates his dad and remember that one Halloween where Theon tried to dress like an old timey pirate but ended up looking like a bad porno actor?

Finally Sansa's phone goes off and it's a text from Marg about nothing in particular but it breaks the sort of bubble they'd created and suddenly she realizes how cold it's gotten with the engine off and the November air. Jon realizes it, too and curses under his breath, starting the car.

“I should get you home,” he says and she nods, even though her parents wont get home from their date for another few hours and Uncle Benjen doesn't care how late she's out ( _oh please, you think your parents didn't stay out all night when they were kids?)._

But Jon needs his rest so she lets him drop her off and gives him a goodbye kiss in her driveway, which is the riskiest thing she's done since kissing him in the kitchen nearly six weeks ago.

She doesn't care.

* * *

She finds herself at Jon's game.

She sits with Robb and Theon, who give her weird looks and she shrugs. “It was this or listen to Marg and Loras sing the Sound of Music all night.” A lie, but an easy lie. She and Jon are getting good at those now.

For the first bit, he has no idea she's there and that's ok with her. She watches and even though she doesn't know much about hockey (despite her brother playing for years and Jon always being around and Robb, Jon, dad, and Arya talking about professional hockey all the time), she can tell Jon's the best on the ice. Maybe that's her being biased, but she doesn't think it is. He looks natural out there, relaxed in a way she rarely sees him. He looks confident.

_She loves him._

She looks around the stands and tries to pick out the recruiters but she can't and she's pretty sure that's the point. The players aren't supposed to know they're there, she thinks. Or are they? She never asked.

There's a woman lower in the stands who cheers loudly every time Jon does something and Sansa realizes with a jolt that it's Lyanna Snow. She knows she's seen Jon's mom at some point. She knows she's met her, but she can't for the life of her remember when. But there she is and Jon looks so much like her, it's scary. Whatever Jon's shitty dad looks like, Jon has none of it and that makes Sansa weirdly glad.

At some point (Sansa has no idea what's going on, really), there's a scuffle on the ice that Jon's involved in and he's suddenly being sent to the penalty box and she can see him seething as he talks to Coach Mormont, glaring at the two players from the other team who had also been involved.

“Bullshit,” Robb hisses and Sansa looks at him. Theon looks equally annoyed and they're both too busy glaring daggers at the other team to notice her confusion.

Jon is still talking to Coach Mormont when his eyes go up to the stands, probably looking for his mom, and his eyes land on her. He looks taken aback and she gives him a little smile and wave and after a moment he raises his hand and waves back. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Lyanna Snow look up at where her son is waving, but Sansa can't (and won't) look at her.

Already Robb and Theon are looking at her strangely and she gives a light laugh and says “look how shocked he is that I actually showed up to a game,” like this is totally nothing and she doesn't have a care in the world. It seems to placate them and she's relieved.

She's also worried that now Jon will be _more_ nervous with her here, on top of the scouts.

Except... why would he be? She doesn't make him nervous. Maybe he'd be nervous that Robb would suspect something because of her suddenly showing up, but her actual presence means nothing to Jon. Definitely not.

When Jon's allowed back on the ice, she watches the rest of the game with her heart in her throat. He's ruthless and Robb and Theon keep shouting and their side of the stands keeps shouting and Lyanna is shouting and Sansa finds herself shouting even though she doesn't know what she's shouting for.

Then suddenly there's a buzzer and her side erupts into cheers and the Winterfell Direwolves pile out onto the ice in celebration and Sansa knows they've won. Robb and Theon are clapping each other on the back like they did something themselves and Sansa isn't particularly religious but she sends a thanks up to the Seven (and the old gods, just in case) that Jon did well.

He's still on the ice but he's taken his helmet off and he's grinning and she wants nothing more than to march down there and lean over the barrier and grab his stupid face and kiss him senseless in front of everyone here, recruiters be damned.

But she won't.

They aren't dating and he isn't hers to kiss publicly. She watches Alys Karstark pull off her helmet and Sansa realizes that she was the goalie who'd blocked a bunch of attempts and Alys must be good, too, and they're both laughing and smiling together and then Lyanna is down there and talking to both of them and Sansa wants to leave now, please.

"Can you give me a ride home?" she asks Robb. Marg had dropped her off (with a confused look because Sansa had never shown any interest in going to a hockey game before), but she'd left and Sansa had hoped, maybe, that she and Jon could leave together, but seeing him with Alys makes her want to get out of this building, now.

Robb looks annoyed and says "we were gonna celebrate with Jon."

"Oh," she says. "I can call Marg." Robb's nodding and heading off down the stands with Theon and Sansa pulls out her phone and texts Margaery a quick SOS. She makes her way through the crowds and outside and the air is cold and refreshing and she takes a deep, calming breath.

She waits for a solid five minutes, but Marg hasn't responded and she's just about to start calling when she hears her name. When she turns around, Jon is pushing his way through the crowd towards her.

“You leaving?” he says, slightly breathless, hair matted down from his helmet and sweat, face flushed from the cold of the rink and the game.

“Yeah, I'm gonna get Marg to pick me up,” she says even though Marg hasn't responded. “Robb and Theon said they were going out to celebrate with you and couldn't give me a ride home.” She rolls her eyes like the perfect annoyed younger sister, but Jon doesn't laugh.

“You could come celebrate,” he shrugs, running a hand through his hair that only serves to make it stick out in weird angles and she resists the urge to touch him, to smooth it out.

“Oh please, like you guys want Robb's little sister tagging along.” She says it like it's a joke, she keeps her voice light and unconcerned and Jon frowns at her. There's a look in his eyes that she doesn't have the energy to dissect right now.

She's saved by, of all people, Lyanna Snow.

“There you are,” Lyanna says throwing her arms around her son. She's so young looking and Sansa remembers she's only in her mid thirties. She's smiling and it looks like Jon's smile. “I'm proud of you,” she's saying to Jon, and Jon looks bashful and tries to break out of her hug but Lyanna laughs and holds tight. “Don't stay out too late or I'm calling the cops and having them track you down,” she says when she finally lets him go. Jon gives her a lopsided smile and says he won't. “Sansa Stark,” Lyanna says when she turns around. “I haven't seen you in years, feels like. I don't think I've seen you at the games before?”

Sansa shrugs and pastes on her best parent smile. “Oh, I used to go to Robb's games, but I haven't been in forever. I figured since it was Jon's last year, I'd at least go to one.” It's not the most believable lie, but it's the best she can pull out when she feels this off-kilter. “It's good to see you again Ms Snow.”

“You too, sweetie,” Lyanna says with what appears to be a genuine smile but there's something in her eyes Sansa can't quite read. “It's been so long, I didn't realize how grown up you were.” Jon gives an uncomfortable cough and Lyanna sighs. “Well, I guess I've overstayed my welcome,” she says and shoots a look at Sansa that throws her off balance even more. “Have fun celebrating, you two.”

“Oh, I'm not going, I'm just waiting for my friend to pick me up,” Sansa interjects quickly and she's not sure why. But she feels like Lyanna knows something, or guesses something, and it's not something Sansa wants her knowing or guessing.

“Where is your friend?” Lyanna asks, looking around the emptying lot.

“Oh...” Sansa trails off and she's not quite sure what to say so she laughs and says “she's being flighty and not responding now, of course. But she'll get here.”

And that, Lyanna decides, is unacceptable and suddenly, without Sansa really realizing how it happens, she's accepting a ride home from Lyanna Snow and Jon looks equally as concerned about this turn of events as Sansa is.

But neither of them really has a good reason to stop it from happening and so Jon watches as Sansa goes off and gets into Lyanna's car and they drive away.

The ride home isn't terrible. Lyanna is nice but there's a strange tension that Sansa can't figure out. She can't tell if it's because Lyanna suspects that Sansa's fooling around with her son, or because Lyanna knows that Catelyn isn't her biggest fan. Sansa wonders how much, if anything, Jon has told Lyanna about Catelyn over the years or how much Lyanna suspects. Sansa finds herself wanting to apologize on her mom's behalf but she also doesn't want to bring it up.

* * *

It's nearly eleven when her phone lights up.

She's already talked to Marg and explained that she'd needed a ride and doesn't anymore, so she's not sure who's texting her now. It's Jon.

_You awake?_

She sends him an eye roll emoji and responds _of course, it's barely 11, I'm not a grandma. Or a baby._

_Can we talk?_

_Aren't you supposed to be celebrating your victory?_

_I went, I celebrated. Can we talk?_

_We are talking_

She can _feel_ his frown through the phone.

_Can you come outside?_

_You're here?_

_Yes, can you?_

_Dad's in the study, he'll hear me go out_

_Go out back, I'll meet you there_

She doesn't respond. She hesitates for a brief moment before deciding to go. There's not really a reason not to. She doesn't bother changing out of her fuzzy cloud pajamas because she thinks she knows what this is about.

She can picture it, the team and their friends out celebrating. Maybe someone brought alcohol. He and Alys having a good time, laughing over their inside jokes and joyously happy about their win. She can picture them kissing and then Jon pulling away like his morals say he should. She can see him apologizing, telling Alys that he'll be right back but he needs to go do something. He'll come here and break it off with her, even though they aren't really dating, but his conscience won't let him kiss Alys while Sansa is still hanging around like a bad smell.

She sneaks downstairs and briefly wonders how Jon will get into the gated backyard before she realizes that Robb probably gave him the code years ago.

When she gets outside, Jon's standing by the pool, drained and covered over for the winter. He looks up and says “didn't know if you were coming.” He gestures with his phone because she hadn't responded and she shrugs.

It's freezing out, mid-November, and she shivers in her thin pajamas and Jon frowns. He grabs her hand and pulls her into the pool house, which her parents keep heated so the pipes for the showers don't freeze and burst. It also serves as a sort of guest house during the holidays when they have too many guests who drink just a little too much. Her Uncle Edmure has slept off quite a few drunken Christmas Eves in this pool house.

It's dark inside and they don't turn any lights on so her parents don't see. There's some moonlight coming in so she can barely read his expression, but she's going to go ahead and guess: sullen.

“What's up,” she says breezily. Nothing matters, she's cool and not bothered in the slightest by the idea of him and Alys. And when he breaks it off with her, she's not going to be upset and she'll be all _totally fine, Jon, I wasn't emotionally invested in this at all, nope, not even a bit._

She sees him shrug. “Just wanted to make sure everything was cool. It was kinda weird how we left it, my mom didn't say anything, right?”

“Weird? No, your mom's great, it was really nice of her to give me a ride since Marg bailed.”

“Ok, good,” he sighs. “My mom can be a lot, sometimes, and I swear, she gets so intense every time she sees me talking to a pretty girl...” he trails off like he doesn't know what else to say.

“That's why you came over here?” He nods. “And you think I'm pretty?” she asks, a smile taking over her face.

Jon sighs in feigned annoyance. “You _know_ you're pretty,” he says and takes a step towards her. She smiles widely even though she's not sure he can see it in the dark and she moves towards him, too.

This is risky. Her parents are right in the house along with three of her siblings. The fourth could come home any minute and decide he wants to do so through the back door so his parents won't catch him if he's drunk or past curfew. It's risky but she doesn't care and then he's kissing her in the dark and silence of the pool house with only the moonlight filtering through the windows and any doubts she had previously have disappeared.

“Have I told you how proud I am?” she asks against his lips between kisses. “You were great tonight.”

He smiles and says “you don't know anything about hockey” and she laughs and tells him she knows enough.

Her arms are around his neck and his are at her waist and she wants him to touch her. She urges his hand under her pajama top and he groans and mutters something about this being a terrible idea, but he's also walking her back towards the guest bed in the corner. They're both whispering agreements on how stupid this is but neither are stopping and then she's crawling backwards on the bed and he's getting on top of her and this is _new_. They've never done this anywhere but his car and she loves it. Jon's weight on top of her, pressing her down into the mattress, it's new and exciting and she wants _more, more, more._

She loves him.

She loves him and she knows, suddenly and with perfect clarity, that she wants him to be her first.

Even if they aren't dating. Even if he doesn't love her back. She trusts him and she loves him and he'd never hurt her and even though whatever they have is tenuous and won't last, she'll never have to look back at her first time with regret or painful memories.

She pushes him slightly by the shoulders and he stops kissing her and she can see the words on the tip of his tongue, _sorry, I'll stop_ , but she doesn't let him say it. Instead she looks him in the eyes and asks “do you have a condom?”

He freezes, and she watches his mouth open and close a few time before he stutters out “I... you... what?”

“A condom,” she says, and her voice doesn't falter. She finds his confusion and panic adorable.

“I... in my wallet,” he says sheepishly, like it's something he should be ashamed of and she wonders, briefly, if he started keeping one there because of her. The idea thrills her. He seems to deflate and he says “I left it in my car.”

“Well, you should probably go get it,” she tells him and pushes him up and off her and out the door before he can protest.

He's gone for three agonizing minutes and she slowly starts to loose her nerve. She wonders if he's not going to come back. But then he does and when she sees him again, outlined in the dim light from the moon, hair a mess and slightly out of breath like he ran the entire way, she feels better. He may be uncertain, he might want to make sure she wants it, but she's very, very sure that _he_ wants it and that gives her the confidence to take off her pajama top.

Things move both very fast and also incredibly slow from there. He's kissing her again and asking if she's sure and she's saying _yes yes yes_ and pulling at his clothes. His coat falls to the floor followed by his Direwolves hoodie with his name across the back and then the t-shirt under that. She's felt his muscles through his clothes and seen them at the pool in the summer, but it's a totally different experience to feel them move and flex under her hands under his hot skin.

He's kissing at her neck now, hand around her back and fumbling slightly with the clasp of her bra and she's comforted by this. She might not be his first, but he isn't perfect and he seems just as nervous as she is.

When her bra is off, he pulls back and looks down at her chest and she watches him lick his lips and it sends a chill up her spine. And then he's leaning forward and placing hot, open mouthed kisses on her neck, her collarbone, right above her heart, and then his mouth is on her breast and she gasps and arches into him with a _yes, yes, Jon_. His hand comes up and cups the other breast and his rough thumb swipes across her nipple and she tries to move her hips against his to get some sort of friction and she feels him laugh against her skin.

Time seems to crawl as his hand leaves her breast and travels down, slowly, slowly, blazing a trail of fire on her skin and begins to push her pajama bottoms off her hips. They fall around her ankles and she tries to kick them off while also trying to walk back towards the bed and she almost trips and then they're both laughing and he helps her onto the bed and he's pulling off her underwear and she's fumbling at his belt and then the button and fly of his jeans and she tugs them down as he throws her underwear off to the side somewhere.

It's all happening so, so fast now. He's suddenly between her thighs, kissing and licking and getting closer and closer to where she wants him and she gasping and moaning and he's telling her to _shh, you gotta be quiet, love._

He makes her come with his lips and tongue and she thinks she'll never feel anything more incredible than that.

Before she knows it, he's got the condom in his hands and somewhere along the way his boxers came off and he's naked too and she can't help but stare down at him. She reaches out and touches him and he makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and gently removes her hand like her touch is too much and maybe it is, from the look on his face. _You sure, love_ , he breathes, he's panting and breathless and _she_ made him that way and she's saying _yes, yes, yes_ like it's a mantra, a prayer, and he's doing something with the condom and then she feels him. It's different than what his fingers felt like, than what his tongue felt like.

It doesn't hurt, necessarily. Not like she'd feared it would, horror stories from the older girls on the cheer squad. There's a stretch and a pinch and it's not necessarily _pleasant_ , but it's not the excruciating pain she was expecting. Jon is breathing heavy against her temple and holding still and she knows this isn't all sex is, he's supposed to move, but she suspects he's waiting to make sure she's ok and she feels a rush of pure gratitude that it's _him_.

She _loves_ him.

“I'm ok”, she says and he nods dumbly and starts to move.

It's a strange feeling. A push and pull, a slight twinge of pain and a somewhat uncomfortable stretch. She stares up at the ceiling, at the fan that isn't moving, and all she can think is that no one told her how _much_ this would be. She'd heard people say it was painful and she heard people say it was the best pleasure ever but no one told her she'd be so _aware_ of everything.

The shadows from the trees outside thrown in sharp relief against the far wall, the smell of sweat and sex and Jon and the fabric softener her mom uses, the sound of them moving together, a wet noise that she wants to be embarrassed by, but instead finds fascinating, Jon's labored breath, his grunts and groans and she's savoring each and every one.

She can feel the slightly scratchy sheets on her back, the ones that her mom uses out here because they aren't good enough for the actual guest bedrooms. She can feel the cool air of the pool house against her exposed skin. And she can feel _Jon_. Jon between her legs, moving inside her. Jon's chest brushing against hers with every thrust. His hands, one on her hip, the other nestled under her head, fingers threaded through her hair. It's all so _much_ and it feels so overwhelming, but it's not necessarily unpleasant.

She doesn't think she'll come like this, not this time, it's all too new and the stretch is just a little too much and the pinch has receded but it's still not the pleasure she felt from the other things they've done. She's sure that with more practice it'll get there, that's what she heard, but for now, this time, she focuses on him.

She's never really been aware of Jon when he comes. Most of the time he doesn't – he gets her off and then tells her he's ok and that he'll take care of it later. A few times he's come _with_ her as they moved frantically against each other and he hadn't quite been able to control himself. A few times he's made her come and she's reached into his pants and grasped him and moved her hand until he groaned, but she's always been coming down from her own high.

Now though, now she pays attention to him and she finds she likes what she sees. His eyes are shut tight like he's trying to concentrate and she likes the noises he's making and she almost wants to throw his words back at him, _you gotta be quiet, love,_ but she doesn't because she doesn't want him to stop making them. She runs her hands up and down his back in an almost soothing motion.

She watched a porn once with Marg and the girl in it had been moaning loudly and exaggeratedly and Sansa wonders briefly if Jon would like that. She wonders if she should start moaning for him, but she thinks not. She thinks Jon would be able to tell if she was faking noises. But she feels a little weird being totally silent, so instead she starts whispering his name into his ear and he seems to like this because his pace increases and his grunts and moans get a little louder and then suddenly he's stilling inside her, her name falling from his lips over and over and she matches it with his own.

He collapses partially on top of her but rolls off quick enough and she's almost sorry when he pulls out and she feels strangely empty. He turns away from her and there's some movement and she realizes he's taking off the condom and wrapping it in a tissue from the box on the bedside table and he throws it into the trashcan and she briefly wonders if someone will see it and know what it is when they go to empty the trash in here.

And then he's back, laying next to her, and he's wrapping his arms around her and murmuring into her ear about how beautiful she is, how wonderful, how perfect that was, is she ok? She feels her heart swell and she nods.

She's perfect.

She loves him.

She doesn't say it, though. Not out loud.

They can't stay like this all night, she has to go back in sometime and he needs to go home himself even though his mom threatening him with the cops would never happen.

They put their clothes back on and Sansa makes a note to wash the sheets out here soon, when her parents aren't home, maybe next Thursday.

He kisses her one last time before she goes back inside and he goes back to his car and when she's safely back upstairs in her room she lays in her bed and closes her eyes and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it's been a while since I've written anything. With everything going on lately, my stress has really ramped up and writing is therapeutic and this just kind of.... happened? I've written for other fandoms, but never this one or this pairing (though I've been lurking quite a bit). Wasn't sure if I was gonna post this or not but what's the point of letting it sit around in my saved folder, am I right, my dudes?
> 
> As a warning, I have the rest of this story mapped out and just so I don't catfish any of you guys with this relatively light & smutty chapter: this is gonna get darker in the next bits before it gets better. I'll add tags as I go.


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read the end notes for possible TW

It continues like this.

After that first time, the floodgates open. They'd had an unspoken rule that they kept their little trysts to his Jeep, but after that night all bets are off. He begins to invite her over when his mom works nights. She makes excuses to her parents and says she's over Marg's and she goes to Jon's.

They have sex in his room (she figures out what she likes and more importantly, figures out how to tell Jon what she likes) and then he'll make her macaroni and cheese (an off-brand, all of their food is off-brand and she doesn't care like she may once have) or some other sort of pasta dish because that's all he really knows how to make for himself. Then they'll sit on his bed and watch Netflix on his laptop. He's never seen Buffy and she's appalled and makes him start. He drives her back before his mom gets home or before her parents get suspicious.

She probably should tell Marg, in case her mom ever brings up the amount of time Sansa is suddenly spending at the Tyrell house, but she doesn't. She doesn't want to tell anyone. She's loathe to break this peaceful little snowglobe world she and Jon have created with each other.

* * *

They get more and more daring at school. They'll brush hands as they walk by each other in the hall. She'll send him dirty texts while he's with Robb and she likes to watch him get all flustered from across the lunchroom.

They get sloppy, too. She's surprised no one has noticed (though if anyone has, her money is on Lyanna Snow, who has only seen them together a total of one time). Sansa's family is strangely, blissfully unaware and Sansa wonders if it's because the idea of her and Jon is so foreign and abhorrent to them, that they can't see it. Or maybe she and Jon are just that sneaky.

One night she spends dinner nudging his foot with hers under the table as he sits across from her and she licks at her spoon exaggeratedly as he scowls. She bites into the dessert her mom had made and moans, not too loud, not enough to draw attention, but enough so that Jon notices. Then, after dinner is done and Jon is helping to clear the plates, they get a moment alone in the kitchen.

“You're killing me,” Jon whispers into her ear and she giggles, biting her lip and batting her eyelashes at him.

She says something about needing to go to the store to pick up some new highlighters for school and Jon immediately offers to drive her because he also needs something from the store. He doesn't bother to say what it is and they both rush out of the house and _still_ her family doesn't notice. By the time they get to his car they're laughing, breathless and flushed with the triumph of getting away with this.

Jon drives to the closest secluded spot he can find (a side street leading to a trail head that no one is using because it's December) and he pulls the condom out of his wallet and she grabs it from his hand and tears it open without really paying attention and fumbles it on and she gets onto his lap with his pants barely undone and her skirt still on and underwear pulled aside and they both moan when he's inside her. She's never been on top before and she likes it, setting the pace and watching him come more and more undone. She experiments with the angle and finds the one she likes best and she comes, hard, crying out his name and hoping no one in her neighborhood is walking by. Jon follows quickly after and she stays on his lap with him inside her for longer than usual, both of them panting and laughing and coming down from a high caused by both sex and the thrill of the secrecy. By the time he pulls out, the condom is slipping off and they laugh again and he wraps it in a tissue and throws it in the plastic bag he uses for trash in his car.

“I guess we should go to the store?” he asks with a grin on his face, still breathless.

“I honestly don't think they'd notice if we came back completely empty handed,” she giggles and he laughs too.

She likes this Jon. This Jon laughs a lot and smiles easily. This Jon seems happy and the fact that _she_ could make him that way makes her heart want to burst right out of her chest. She likes this Jon.

She _loves_ this Jon.

To be fair, she loves the other Jon, too. The sullen Jon, always worried about money and whether he's being a burden on anyone. The Jon that sits quietly by while she and her siblings argue about the most trivial things. The Jon that follows Robb like a shadow, content to let Robb be the center of attention. She loves the Jon that makes sure she got home safe and texts his mom updates about when he'll be home. She loves the Jon that shows Rickon, for the millionth time, how to hold a hockey stick. She loves the Jon that discusses string theory with Bran (even though she's sure Jon doesn't actually know that much about string theory, he just lets Bran talk and adds to the conversation when he can). She loves the Jon that puts up with Margaery's antics when she's over. Sansa knows Marg isn't his favorite, but he doesn't _hate_ her and sometimes even finds her amusing, and the times when he smiles over something Marg says makes Sansa's heart beat just a little faster. Marg is her best friend and Sansa doesn't think she can really love someone who hates her best friend.

She loves every part of Jon, even the annoying parts. His parking in the middle of nowhere when it's bitterly cold out and she has to trudge through snow to get to the school or the store. His insistence that he can do everything himself, even when he's doing it wrong. His confidence that is fine one minute and then comes crashing down the next with no warning. His distrust of social media and therefore lack of any presence there. She has offered time and again to set him up with at least _Instagram_ , but he refuses every time.

“Why would anyone want to look at pictures of me?” he'd asked with absolute sincerity the first time she offered and Sansa had rolled her eyes.

“That's not the point,” but then she couldn't adequately _describe_ the point to him and so she'd given up.

* * *

Sansa's not stupid, she knows Jon doesn't love her.

Well, not in the way she wants him to. She thinks he loves her in an obligated kind of way, because she's Robb's little sister and he's known her for most of her life and he likes having sex with her. But he's not _in love_ with her and she won't delude herself into thinking he does.

She easily could. She could easily misinterpret the things he does and translate it into love. The things he says in her ear when he's inside her. The way he calls her _love_ then, too. He only calls her that when they're naked, so she knows it means nothing. The way he holds her hand sometimes when he drives. The way he'll pick up her favorite snacks on his way over and subtly hand it to her when Robb isn't looking. The way he texts her stupid memes and dog videos during class, especially when he knows it's the classes she hates. The way he'll use any reason to touch her; her hand, her waist, her hair. The way he puts on the music station she likes in the car. They way he pretends the music is unbearable, but he'll be a martyr for her and it makes her laugh every time.

She could easily translate any of these things into love, but she won't.

She's not stupid.

* * *

They're at his house one day after school and she's snacking on some off brand cheese puffs and he goes out and grabs the mail.

When he comes in, his face is pale and she sees the official looking envelope in his hand with the crest for Winterfell University on the front.

They're offering him a partial scholarship and his hands shake as he re-reads the letter. WU is where Robb will be going (like every Stark has, per tradition. Sansa used to think she didn't want to go there, she wanted to go to KLU or U Vale or maybe even somewhere in Essos, but right now she thinks WU might not be the worst choice).

She's so incredibly proud of him and the smile that eventually works it's way onto his face is maybe the best thing she's ever seen.

  
Winterfell U isn't even that far away. She'll still be in high school when he goes off next year, but if he goes to WU, they could still see each other and the thought thrills her (there's a niggling doubt in her brain that once he's in college, he won't want a _high school girl_ anymore, but she pushes that away because she refuses to be upset when he's so very happy right now).

* * *

Christmas is coming up and she wonders if she should get him a gift. She doesn't usually. Most of the kids don't buy each other gifts. Mom and dad buy them gifts and she knows Robb and Jon exchange their own, but she's never given Jon a gift and they haven't talked about it at all.

She decides to bake him a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies. It's his favorite but everyone else hates them so she usually never makes them in the annual Catelyn and Sansa Cookie Extravaganza. But this year she does and her mom just raises an eyebrow at her and Sansa shrugs. She hopes her mom chalks it up to Sansa _growing and maturing and thinking of others during the holiday season_ and not _he makes me feel very very good and gives me lots of orgasms and this is my way of trying to thank him?_ She thinks it works.

Jon and his mom are invited to their Christmas Eve party every year but Jon's mom usually has to work. She's a nurse and the holidays get busy, Jon explains every year. Jon always shows up and he and Robb and Arya and Theon disappear into the basement less than an hour into the party, much to Catelyn's dismay, every single year.

This year is no different except that she gets a text from Jon inviting her down but she says no, her mom needs help hosting. It's not a total lie, but the real reason she doesn't go down is because she and Jon are a secret so they can't be too friendly towards each other and she knows Arya would whine about her being there and Robb and Theon wouldn't really care, too busy playing video games. She doesn't want to sit in the basement in her nice dress trying not to talk to Jon too much while pretending to be interested in video games while Arya glares at her.

So she stays upstairs and instead has to talk to the Baratheons when they arrive. Robert is one of dad's oldest friends (though over the years her dad seems more and more put off by Robert's behavior). Robert says something about how big Sansa's gotten, which is just gross old man speak for _I like your boobs but I can't say that because it's inappropriate._ Cersei is cold as ever, pursing her lips and giving Sansa a once-over that could freeze the blood in your veins. Joffrey is still bitter and angry that Sansa turned him down but he knows better than to say anything in front of their parents.

She's relieved to get away from them and she also manages to avoid her Aunt Lysa and cousin Robin, huddled together near the food table and judging everyone in the room. Uncle Edmure is drunk, already, his wife Roslyn fed up with him as usual. Uncle Benjen is somewhere, he usually tries to disappear.

When Margaery finally arrives with Loras in tow, Sansa is relieved.

“Thank the gods,” she whispers to Marg, and the three of them go get drinks. She spends the rest of the party with the Tyrells and it's much more bearable.

* * *

Christmas morning is it's usual frantic mess of Rickon, Arya, and Robb tearing wrapping paper off presents with enthusiasm. Sansa and Bran are much more reserved and Sansa swears she spends half her morning just cleaning up wrapping paper tossed in her general direction because they know she'll dispose of it properly.

Mom and dad sit off to the side and let the kids go at it, any attempt at trying to control the situation was abandoned years ago (likely around the time Rickon began to be able to unwrap presents on his own).

Later in the day, after presents and a few Christmas movies, Jon comes over because his mom once again has to work the night shift and even Catelyn can't stand the idea of him being alone on Christmas.

This year he finds a tin of oatmeal raisin cookies waiting for him and his eyes go immediately to Sansa and she feels her heart rate pick up. He looks so utterly confused and grateful and he shouldn't be over _cookies_. There's a second tin with chocolate chip that's labeled for his mom and she watches the muscles in his jaw tic as he clenches his teeth together and she can't quite place the emotion on his face when he looks back at her again.

But then Robb and Arya are dragging him out into the living room to watch a movie and Sansa is left breathless in the kitchen.

At some point Robb and Jon exchange their gifts with little fanfare and Sansa doesn't quite understand because when she and Margaery exchange their gifts, they always put on Christmas music and light a bunch of candles and sit near the Tyrell Christmas tree and treat it like the most important moment in history. They speak formally and try not to giggle at the old timey accents they adopt as they hand each other their gifts. It's over the top and ridiculous and Sansa knows this but she still can't understand Robb and Jon's exchange, where they basically just throw newspaper wrapped objects at each other. Half the time Robb can't even be bothered to wrap the gift and it's just in a plastic bag.

At some point during the afternoon, Jon finds her alone in the kitchen. They don't have a ton of time because the rest of the Starks are in and out all day, but he stops her from taking another tray of cookies out to her family, who are watching a movie in the living room.

“I know we didn't talk about this or anything but I was out shopping...” he says, running a hand through his hair and barely able to meet her eyes. She's confused, even as he reaches into his sweatshirt pocket and pulls out a small wrapped package and presses it into her hands. She looks down at it, not quite sure what to say and he shrugs “it's nothing, I just saw it and thought of you. It's nothing.” Then he's backing away and out of the room and she's left with it in her hands.

She doesn't want to open it here, so she goes into the bathroom down the hall and opens it there. The wrapping job is terrible with too much tape and inside is a plain white box. She opens the box and finds some cotton padding surrounding a little silver necklace. She can tell it's nothing expensive. The chain looks cheap, and the pendant on it is nothing fancy. A small bird in flight.

One time, at her dad's birthday party, Cersei Baratheon had called her _little dove_. It'd been condescending and meant to be an insult. Arya had heard it, told the rest of her siblings, and suddenly they were all calling her _little dove_. She hated it and it had spread to Jon and Theon and even Margaery and Loras and it had gone on for _years_.

She stares down at the bird pendant and thinks _Jon thought of me when he saw this_. Jon had been out, in a store, saw something, and thought of her. The idea brings tears to her eyes and she fumbles the necklace out of the box and she has a hard time with the clasp because she was right, it is cheap and it barely works but she manages to get it around her neck. She looks at herself in the bathroom mirror and she likes the way it looks on her. She likes the way it feels.

She goes back out and joins everyone in the living room and she can feel Jon's eyes on her and she knows he can see she's wearing the necklace. She should've texted him but she couldn't come up with the words so she hopes he knows that she loves it. That she's wearing it not because she feels like she has to but because she wants to.

If she were stupid, she could easily translate this necklace into love.

She has to remind herself, very hard and throughout the entire movie, that she is not stupid.

* * *

Christmas break means she sees a lot of Jon, but doesn't get to spend any time with him.

Robb has ended things with Wyn Manderly (or likely the reverse, but she only has Robb's side of it), so he's got dibs on Jon full time again. Cheer practice is over for the season, it won't pick up again until Spring, so when they go back to school, she and Jon won't have as much reason to be together publicly. They'll have to start lying more and they'll have to start sneaking around more.

For a while it was exciting, now she finds the idea less than appealing.

The longer this goes on, the more she just wants to tell everyone and be able to go out with Jon and touch him and kiss him in public. But she knows that can't be. Robb would flip out and Arya would hate her even more and her mom would be furious. (Honestly, though, she thinks her dad might approve? Dad loves Jon. Sometimes she thinks dad might love Jon more than his own kids because Jon never gives him any sort of hassle and her dad's a simple man like that. She knows this isn't actually true but the idea makes her laugh.)

But Jon would never risk losing Robb or Arya. And even though she thinks her dad might be ok with it, Jon would never risk Ned, either. She knows this. She knows Jon grew up with just his mom, with a shitty dad who left her pregnant and alone while he went back to his family in Dorne (how no one pressed charges against a twenty seven year old businessman knocking up a fifteen year old waitress is beyond her, but she knows Jon's dad has money and his mom doesn't and she can guess the reason). Jon's grandparents had helped raise him but they'd both died when Jon was very young and it had been just him and his mom (and his dad's infrequent child support checks) until Jon was eight when he'd been brought into the Stark family as an honorary member.

She knows how much her family means to Jon and even though she wants to mean a lot, too, she knows she'll never be enough. She'll never mean more than Robb's friendship and Arya's blind adoration and Ned's respect.

And so it stays a secret.

* * *

Jon gets more letters, more offers from colleges, scholarships both academic and athletic, and she's _so proud_ of him but these other colleges are further away and some of them are offering him more than WU. White Harbor is offering a full ride as long as he plays hockey for them ( _their team isn't great but I'm not looking to go pro or anything and a full ride, Sansa!)_

She tells him how proud she is of him and that day, she drops to her knees in the kitchen and asks him to let her know if she's doing it right as she unzips his jeans and Jon lets the WHU letter flutter to the floor when she takes him into her mouth.

* * *

She comes down with a stomach bug in early January.

It's not the worst sickness she's ever had, but she throws up at least once a day for a week straight and it leaves her feeling overly tired. She finds she can't concentrate a lot and spaces out sometimes.

* * *

By the eighth day in a row, Marg is more than a little concerned and tells her she should go to a doctor. Sansa waves her off, she's fine. It's a stomach bug. Marg points out that most stomach bugs only last twenty four hours.

* * *

She and Marg are at the Stark's on a Thursday after school. Mom and dad are out at date night and Robb, Jon, and Theon have disappeared somewhere, out with some guys from school. Sansa is the babysitter tonight and Marg had come over with the promise of pizza.

They're all in the kitchen – her, Marg, Arya, Bran, and Rickon, arguing over what toppings to get (Arya and Rickon want every meat option, Bran and Sansa want vegetarian, and all of them are violently opposed to Margaery's suggestion of pineapple). In the middle of it she feels dizzy. She hasn't been eating well the past couple weeks and suddenly the amount of people in the kitchen and the raised voices are too much and she feels her vision blur and then there's shouting and hands grabbing at her and when she comes to, she's on the floor of the kitchen with Margaery and Arya's worried faces above her and Rickon crying and Bran trying to calm him.

“I'm gonna call mom,” Arya whispers, getting up to go get her phone.

“No,” Sansa calls back, “I'm fine, don't interrupt them. I just need to eat.”

“Are you still sick?” Marg asks, sounding almost angry. “I told you to go get checked out.”

“Sick?” Arya asks, looking between them.

“I have a stomach bug,” Sansa explains and Margaery looks furious.

“No, you don't. This has been going on for weeks, something's wrong.”

“Weeks,” Arya repeats, looking surprised. “I mean, you've been acting a little off but I thought you were just bummed the holidays were over.”

Marg is looking at her strangely and Sansa moves to stand up.

“I just need to eat,” she says.

“Arya, call in the pizza order,” Marg says, voice suddenly very calm and very even.

Arya doesn't even argue, and no one says anything about pizza toppings.

Marg pulls her out of the room and far enough away so the others can't hear.

“Ok, I'm going to ask you something and I need you to not get mad at me,” Margaery says, looking her dead in the eyes. “Are you pregnant?”

Sansa finds she can't say anything to this because she's not and it's so patently stupid that there _is_ no response to it. All she manages to say is “pregnant?”

Margaery continues on, keeping her voice level and cool. “Now, as far as I know, you're still a virgin but honestly I'm starting to put some stuff together and I think maybe you haven't been telling me everything?” Sansa starts to stutter out a defense but Marg cuts her off. “One, you dumped Joffrey with no warning and got really happy and, like, starry eyed around the same time. Two, you started having way more 'things to do' and stopped hanging out with me and Loras as much. Three, you have been throwing up every day for the past two weeks but don't have a fever and except for being tired, no other symptoms.”

Marg stares at her as she finishes and Sansa's brain tries to formulate a response. To say _no_. To say _that's insane_. To say _I just had my period, there's no way_. Except, when she thinks about it, she didn't just have her period. In all the rush of the holidays and then not feeling well, she couldn't remember the last time she'd bled.

She tries to open her mouth to lie but instead, all that comes out is a breathless “but we were so careful.”

Margaery stares at her. Really, truly stares at her and Sansa watches her calm, confident, carefree mask slip and the Margaery that rarely sees the light of day comes out. The totally-not-cool-not-in-control-freaking-out Margaery.

“Oh shit,” she says and Sansa feels the panic rise in her own chest. “Oh shit, I thought for sure you'd tell me I was full of shit, oh _shit_.”

“I can't be pregnant, we used a condom every time,” Sansa is whispering desperately.

“ _Every time_ ,” Marg repeats, dumbfounded, and Sansa feels like the worst friend in the world. “Please tell me it's not Joffrey.”

“No,” Sansa wants to laugh and cry at the same time and the word comes out a strangled mixture of both. “I can't tell you who,” she says because Arya and Bran and Rickon are only a room away. And she and Jon have an understanding.

“Ok, fine. Ok.” Marg starts pacing, then goes and grabs her purse. “I'm running out and grabbing you like, _every_ test possible and then we're going to eat pizza and you're gonna drink a bunch of water and then I'm going to stand outside the bathroom while you pee on a thousand sticks.”

She leaves Sansa standing in the living room.

* * *

Dinner feels surreal.

She methodically eats her pizza (plain, she's dimly aware that Arya didn't try to sneak her preferred toppings) and drinks two full glasses of water under Margaery's watchful eye. Arya watches them both, as does Bran. Rickon had been shaken by her fainting spell but seems to be making a decent recovery with pizza.

When they're done Marg asks Arya to watch the boys while she and Sansa go take some medicine. This is bullshit and Arya knows this is bullshit, but she doesn't argue.

They go upstairs and Sansa tries not to cry and tries not to let her hands shake as she pees on every test Margaery got. It's messy and her shaking hands cause her to miss more than once. When she's done she lines them all up on the counter and washes her hands and opens the door. Marg sets a timer and then takes her away from the tests.

They sit in silence while they wait and Marg asks her again.

“Will you tell me who? Why is it a secret? Is it someone older? Did they pressure you?”

Sansa knows she means older like _is it a teacher_ and not older like _Jon is slightly over a year older than her._

She can't say it. She and Jon have an understanding and even though she hasn't heard anyone come up the stairs she can't risk Arya or the boys overhearing. She starts to panic and the need to _tell someone_ rises so forcefully she can't stop it. She's sitting on her bed with Marg next to her and she leans over to her bedside table where her dream journal (that she is terrible at keeping so it's practically empty) sits and she opens to a random page and shakily writes _Jon_.

Margaery stares at the page for much too long.

“No fucking way,” she breathes. “No _fucking_ way.”

“You can't tell anyone,” Sansa begs, and she's crying, she can't stop it anymore. “You can't tell anyone, Robb can't find out. My mom can't find out.”

“I won't, I won't, shit,” Marg throws her arms around her and hugs her and only lets go when her phone alarm goes off. They both stare at the phone like it will magically stop pinging if they wish hard enough. It doesn't and Marg silences the alarm and then slowly gets off the bed. “Do you want me to look at them for you?” she asks.

Sansa wants to say yes but she knows she has to do it. She makes her way over to the bathroom, slowly, like walking to the gallows. She looks at every test.

_Positive._

_Positive._

_Positive._

_Positive._

By the fifth one the tears are so thick in her eyes she can't even read it but she doesn't need to.

She hears Margaery curse from the bedroom and her silence has told Marg all she needs to know.

“Shit. We'll figure this out. We can figure this out, I'll help you figure it out,” Marg is babbling and Sansa's never seen her so panicked. It's almost comical.

She starts to laugh. Marg looks at her, horrified, but she can't help it, she's laughing and laughing and tears are rolling down her face and her stomach hurts and she's exhausted and she can't stop _laughing._

* * *

What feels like hours later, but is probably just minutes, she's calmed down enough to drink the glass of water Marg hands her.

They lay on her bed together, not saying anything. She hears Arya come upstairs at some point and knock on the door and Sansa calls that she's fine. Arya doesn't press.

Arya goes into her room, the one that's connected to Sansa's by their shared bathroom. It strikes her too late that they left the tests on the counter. It strikes her too late that Arya has access to the bathroom.

She feels like she's moving in slow motion and she hears Marg yell “Arya, don't go in there!” but it's too late and by the time Sansa reaches her door to the bathroom Arya is standing there staring at the line of positive tests, eyes huge.

And then Sansa's begging again, a litany of “please, you can't tell mom and dad, you can't tell Robb, you can't tell _anyone_.”

Arya looks at her with wide eyes and all she says is “I won't” and that makes Sansa start crying again. And then Arya is hugging her, arms wrapped around Sansa's middle, face pressed into her shoulder, and Sansa is hugging her back and Margaery is sniffling off to the side.

Arya doesn't ask her who. She doesn't ask any questions. Instead she suddenly pulls away and looks determined.

“Mom and dad will be home soon,” she says, turning towards the line of tests. She goes under the sink and grabs a trash bag out of the box and throws all the tests in it, wraps the excess bag around and around and around until it's just a ball of plastic and you can't tell what's inside. This she stuffs into the bathroom trash, pushing it down under the used tissues and even the tampons and she doesn't seem to care that it's gross.

“Pretend you're asleep,” Marg adds in, pushing Sansa towards her room as Arya tries to artfully arrange the trash over the bag of tests in what Sansa assumes is a sort of manic gesture of helpfulness. Marg starts to gather her things and says “I'll head out, Sansa, turn off your light, Arya can you keep watching the boys?”  
  


Arya nods. “I'll tell mom and dad you weren't feeling well. You didn't eat all day and your blood sugar dropped and you got dizzy but then you ate and you're fine but went to bed early. There's no way Rickon _doesn't_ tell mom you fainted, the best I can do is explain that you didn't faint, you just got dizzy and had to sit down for a second. Bran won't say anything.”

Marg is halfway out the door when she turns and says “we'll figure this out” and then she's gone.

Arya nods, pushing Sansa towards her bed.

“Thank you,” is all Sansa can manage. Arya nods, looking stoic, and turns to leave too, but at the last second she turns back and hugs Sansa fiercely and repeats what Margaery had said.

We'll figure this out.

* * *

For all that she loves Arya and Margaery for being there for her, Sansa knows that the only person that has to help her _figure this out_ is Jon.

She lays in bed that night, unable to sleep, and thinks a lot. She debates not telling Jon. But if she has the baby there's really no way Jon doesn't find out. She also decides that she has to tell Jon because Jon would want to know no matter what. His dad abandoned him and she knows Jon would never want to do the same.

But then there's the part where Jon is getting scholarship offers and she'd watched the way his eyes lit up with hope when he talks about it. She remembers the way he'd talked about getting out of Winterfell, of leaving behind all the people who treated him like shit because of what happened to his mom. She thinks of how he mentioned, once, that he was thinking of going into IT or something like that because he was good with computers and good at math and IT was a practical field with a lot of job openings. And she knows that if she was pregnant, Jon would drop his entire future to be there for her. It doesn't matter that she would have her parents and siblings to help her. It wouldn't matter at all. He'd never leave Winterfell.

She needs to tell him. The end. Period.

She picks up her phone and texts him before she can stop herself.

_When can I see you next?_

His answer is near immediate and under different circumstances she'd be delighted at the idea that maybe he was sitting by his phone, waiting for her to text.

_Your idiot brother is trying to get us to go bowling tomorrow night even though I hate bowling, but I should be free Saturday?_

She'll have to wait a full day before telling him. She doesn't know if she can.

_Sure, Saturday._

_Ok, I have practice in the morning but I can meet you after? Noon? I have work at 5_

_Yeah, great_

* * *

She gets Marg to drive her to the school on Saturday morning around ten thirty. His practice is done at eleven and she knows he probably meant to go home and shower and change, but she's been nauseous for the past thirty six hours and she can't wait any longer. She's got about a half an hour before he gets out, just enough time for her to go into the school bathroom and have a quick panic attack. She squats on the floor and puts her head between her knees and tries to breathe _in and out_.

She pulls herself together at ten fifty three and heads out to the parking lot and waits by his car. When she hears the team start exiting the school, she ducks down so she's hidden and it's not until Jon comes around to the side she's on that he sees her.

“Oh,” he says, looking confused. “I thought we were meeting later.”

“Yeah,” she says, “sorry.” She doesn't offer more than that and Jon frowns. She doesn't say anything else and he opens the back door and slings his hockey bag in and she goes around to the passenger side and gets in.

He starts the car to get the heat going, even though his Jeep takes pretty much the entire ride home to heat up enough to make a difference. Still, he tries.

“Did you want to go somewhere?” he asks.

“Is your mom working?” Jon shakes his head no and she says “I guess we can go to the park,” even though it's freezing out. He doesn't argue and drives them to the park and he leaves the car running even though he hates wasting gas.

They sit in silence and she fidgets with the hem of her sweatshirt. It's one of Robb's, big and cozy and she'd taken it a long time ago and swore to him over and over again that she didn't have it. She's thankful for it now. Robb isn't with her, but it's kind of like he's with her? She can't explain it.

She doesn't know the best way to do this. Start telling him about being nauseous and tired and hope he works it out on his own so she doesn't have to say the words? Just rip the bandaid off and say it? She goes with the latter.

“I'm pregnant,” she whispers it like she's hoping he won't hear.

The words seem to hit him like a physical force and he recoils from her and his back hits the door and all she can think is _he hates me, he hates me, I've ruined everything_.

“I... what? Are you sure?” he asks, his voice is an octave higher than it normally is and she might find it funny if she didn't suddenly resent his question.

“You think I'm joking?” she asks bitterly, and she shouldn't be this angry with him because she'd spent a few hours Thursday night questioning the multitude of home pregnancy tests that she'd seen with her own eyes.

“ _No_ ,” he says with conviction, “but are you sure? Did you take a test? They can be wrong.”

He's trying to get out of this and she hates him for it. It doesn't matter that she had done the same thing. It doesn't matter that she'd been hoping and praying to any god that would listen that all those tests were false. It wasn't until Marg had taken her to a clinic yesterday after school that she'd given up hope that the tests and her symptoms were wrong.

“Yes I took a test. I took a bunch of tests. Then I went to a clinic. I'm not _stupid_ , Jon.” She's seething for no reason.

“I didn't say... I just meant...” he's trying so hard to come up with something to say and the rational part of her wants to tell him it's ok, to hug him and comfort him and have him comfort her. The irrational and terrified part of her brain doesn't say anything.

She let's him process the information

“I... are you ok?” he asks finally. “You said you went to a clinic, are you ok?”

The question hits her off guard and she nods. “Yeah, I just wanted them to confirm, I'm healthy, everything came back normal.”

“I should've taken you,” he says, staring off through the windshield. “I was _bowling_.”

“I wanted to make sure,” now she feels defensive, like he's blaming her for not letting him come to that clinic in the weird part of town that Marg took her to so no one would recognize them.

He brings his hands up and grinds his palms into his eyes like he's either trying not to cry or trying to stave off a headache.

“You shouldn't have been alone,” his voice cracks, just slightly, just enough to make her stomach drop.

“I wasn't,” she explains and now's the point where she has to tell him the other thing. “Marg was with me.”

“Margaery knows?” he asks, head snapping up to look at her.

“She's the one who figured it out,” she shrugs. “She got me the tests and stayed with me while I took them.”

“Good. It's good you weren't alone,” he breathes. “Does she know about me?”

“Yeah, I freaked out and told her. Sorry.”

“No, no, it's fine,” he says and he's reaching across the console to her and she both does and doesn't want him to touch her. She does because she almost _always_ wants to touch him and she doesn't because if he does she thinks she might break.

“Arya knows, too,” she whispers, just before his hand can make contact with hers. He freezes but doesn't look as panicked as she thought he would.

“Ok,” he says instead and takes her hand.

It's not the reaction she expected. She wanted him to be angry with her or hate her or _something._ She doesn't want him to be _nice_.

And then she's crying again (she's cried so much in the past two days she's surprised she has anything left) and he's saying something she can barely hear and tugging at her hand and she's climbing over the console and curling into his lap and he's fumbling with the seat lever to try and make more room for her and she _can't_ _stop crying._

She's not sure how long they sit like that and she's not sure if he cried at all. She did, loudly, face pressed into his shoulder, and she hadn't been aware enough to notice if he was, too. When she finally pulls back and looks at him, his eyes are sad but he's not crying and it makes her feel better.

“I should clarify,” she sniffs, wiping at her nose with the sleeve of Robb's sweatshirt, “Arya saw the tests, she doesn't know it's you.”

“Oh,” is all he says and she thinks he almost sounds disappointed.

“We need to figure out what we're gonna do,” she says and lays her head back on his shoulder.

His arm is around her waist and his other hand is carding gently through her hair and for the first time since Thursday, she doesn't feel so completely on edge.

“I think you should talk to someone,” he says after a few moments.

“I've been talking to Marg and Arya.”

He shakes his head. “No, I mean, like someone who's been through this. Someone who can tell you what it's like.”

“I can't tell my mom,” she says in horror. “Not yet. I _can't_.”

“Yeah I get that.” He clears his throat and seems to hesitate for a moment. “You could talk to mine?”

Sansa can only imagine what Jon's thinking. How much his mom struggled being a teen mother. The rumors and gossip she had to endure. The fear and insecurity. Losing her parents and being left alone with a five year old.

Lyanna Snow is suddenly the best person Sansa can think to talk to about this and she presses herself into Jon harder. “We can tell her?” she asks hopefully and Jon nods even though she can tell the idea is making him nervous.

* * *

They decide not to wait and Lyanna doesn't seem surprised when Jon comes home, but she _is_ surprised when he shows up with Sansa in tow (eyes red and puffy, hair a mess, the least fashionable outfit she's ever worn).

Jon's got a death grip on her hand and he's paler than Sansa's ever seen him and he's not saying anything. Lyanna is looking confused and worried and Jon looks like he might pass out at any moment and neither of them are talking and Sansa can't stand the silence.

“Hi Ms Snow,” she starts and Lyanna looks over at her. “I was wondering, can we talk to you?”

Lyanna looks down at their joined hands and then she nods and they all go to the living room. Lyanna sits and Sansa sits but Jon stays standing and rocks anxiously back and forth on the balls of his feet. If Sansa didn't know any better, she'd say he looks like he's about to run.

“Guess I'll just get right to it,” Sansa says with a forced laugh. “I'm pregnant.”

There's a pause, a long one, as Lyanna stares at her, then her eyes go to Jon. “Oh _Jon_ ,” she breathes, “what did you _do_.” That is absolutely the last thing Sansa thought Lyanna would say, but apparently it isn't a surprise to Jon and she watches his shoulders slump and he seems to crumple in on himself. “You were supposed to be better,” Lyanna is saying, almost to herself, and Sansa can't reconcile this person with the woman she knows, who loves Jon so much and is always so proud of him.

“I'm sorry, mom,” Jon's saying back and now he's definitely about to cry. "I messed up."

Sansa feels a terrible and ferocious anger rise up in her and she stands up and moves to get in front of Jon. “ _He_ didn't mess up,” she says, taking Jon's hand again. “ _We_ did.”

Lyanna stares at her and something shakes loose in her expression and suddenly the anger and disappointment is gone and Lyanna's saying “Oh Jon, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it.”

Lyanna's hugging Jon and then she hugs Sansa and she's back to being the Lyanna that Sansa remembers, but Sansa knows she won't ever forget that initial reaction and she doesn't think Jon will either.

* * *

“That didn't go like I thought it would,” she tells Jon in his car after they've talked (and talked and talked and talked for _hours_ ) to Lyanna. “I mean the beginning part.”

Jon shrugs, and there's something about him that seems _smaller_ now, like this day has taken something from him. “She got knocked up when she was fifteen,” he's saying. “She's spent my whole life telling me not to make the same mistakes she did and then I go and do it.”

Sansa frowns and turns to look at him as he drives and says with as much conviction as she can put into her voice: “you aren't a mistake.”

* * *

Everyone notices the strange new dynamic in the Stark household between Sansa and Arya but none of them say anything, just in case it shatters the newfound peace. Even Robb notices. Even her dad.

Sansa loves her dad, really, but he absolutely does not know what to do with her, he never has. He's never understood her love of fashion and pop music and fairy tales. He couldn't talk to her about her ballet lessons like he could with Robb and hockey or Arya and fencing. And her fights with Arya might as well have been in a foreign language for all he knew and the only way he ever dealt with it was to send them to their rooms.

Her dad is a simple man and the fact that Sansa and Arya aren't at each other's throats lately is good enough for him. He doesn't question it. Robb's basically the same. He asks them once what happened, mostly as a joke, and when he gets twin glares from the sisters, he never asks again. Rickon is still young and probably notices a difference but doesn't understand what it means.

It's mom and Bran that watch them.

Bran's always been intuitive and he knows something happened the night that Sansa fainted. Sansa's pretty sure he doesn't know _what_ , but he knows it changed that night and that her fainting likely had something to do with it. She honestly wouldn't be surprised if he figured it out. If he does, he never says anything. But sometimes he hugs Sansa for no reason and she never asks him why and they never talk about it.

Her mom watches them, too, like she's trying to put a puzzle together with half the pieces missing. Because it's not just a truce between the girls, it's not just them deciding not to fight anymore.

It's Arya telling Theon to _fuck off_ whenever he makes a joke at Sansa's expense now. It's Sansa doing Arya's makeup for a night out with her friends (one of them being Ned Dayne that Arya _absolutely doesn't_ have a crush on), the two of them barricading themselves into their connected rooms for hours. It's them watching movies together in Sansa's room without the rest of the family. It's _that_ morning, when their mom makes a passing comment about the state of Sansa's hair (which she hasn't had the energy to style lately and more often than not goes to school with it in a messy bun) and Arya snaps “lay _off_ mom, she's allowed to not be perfect all the time.”

_That_ morning everyone had stopped and turned to stare at Arya, who'd glared at them all, grabbed Sansa's hand, and headed to the bus stop.

* * *

She and Jon talk about it _a lot_.

She talks about it with Marg and even with Arya. She reads the brochures the clinic had handed to her and articles online and message boards.

She finds herself at the Snow house one day after school. She gets Marg to drop her off (Marg offers to wait outside to drive her home and Sansa cries for a solid three minutes because apparently crying is all she does now. It's her new state of being.)

Lyanna opens the door and says “oh, Jon isn't here right now.”

Sansa knows this. He's been picking up more and more shifts at the grocery store even though she told him money wasn't going to be an issue. But Jon is stubborn and he does it anyway.

“I know,” Sansa says, fiddling with the bird pendant around her neck. “I came to talk to you.”

Lyanna lets her in and they go to the kitchen and Lyanna starts to make her a cup of hot chocolate and Sansa _almost_ cries again.

“I just... I wanted to talk without Jon here,” she says, like that's not obvious, like they didn't cover that at the door. Lyanna nods and waits for her to continue. Sansa takes a deep breath and says “did you regret it? Having him?”

Lyanna takes a very long time to answer. She finishes getting the hot chocolate together and passes Sansa her mug. They let the drinks cool a little and it's only after she's taken her first sip that she responds.

“Sometimes. I remember in the beginning, he wouldn't sleep and I didn't want to make my mom take him _again_ so I would walk around downstairs trying to make him sleep and trying not wake my parents up and I remember thinking that I wish I'd given him up or never had him in the first place.” She sighs and puts her face in her hands and Sansa wonders if Lyanna has ever told anyone this before. “He wouldn't ever sleep. He rarely cried but I couldn't ever get him down and I felt like I was doing something wrong. And I had to drop out of school and get my GED. And then when I started nursing school I felt so guilty leaving him all the time with my parents but I knew I needed something _more_ than being a waitress if I was ever going to support him. And then my parents died just months after I got my nursing license and I was left with him and no help and I have spent eighteen years trying to do everything I can, but it never seems enough.” Lyanna is staring into her mug of hot chocolate and Sansa wants to hug her but she finds she can't move. “I _love him_ ,” Lyanna says fiercely, “I love him so much. I can't explain it and it's been so hard and I wouldn't give him up for the world, but yes, there were times, in my darkest moments, that I wished I'd made a different choice.”

By this point Sansa is absolutely crying again and Lyanna's blinking away tears and all Sansa can say is “Thank you.”

“Please don't ever say anything to Jon,” Lyanna says, lifting her eyes up. “He doesn't need to hear that, ever. I already fucked up when you told me about it...”

“I won't say a word,” Sansa promises and this time she does reach across the kitchen counter and takes Lyanna's hand in a reassuring squeeze. “And he knows you love him.”

* * *

Sansa will always be eternally grateful for Lyanna's honesty. She thinks of how easy it would have been for Lyanna to lie and say _no, he was a blessing and a ray of sunshine and I never had doubts for a minute_.

She and Jon make the decision eight days after she tells him she's pregnant.

They talk about it for another four.

They talk about it with Lyanna, they even talk about it with Marg ( _that's_ a strange conversation, the three of them sitting at the Tyrell kitchenette table with a bunch of adoption and abortion and birthing pamphlets spread out in front of them). Sansa talks about it with Arya, but Jon isn't there for that one.

They all support her and she almost wishes at least one of them would just call her a monster or something.

She feels so _incredibly_ young when she makes the phone call and sets up the appointment. She turned seventeen in November and in the North that means she's legally allowed to do this on her own without a parent with her. Small miracles, she guesses.

Marg and Arya offer to go with her. Lyanna offers. She turns them all down gently and says it's something she and Jon are going to do themselves (well, she doesn't say _Jon_ to Arya, because Arya still doesn't know).

They go to the appropriate appointments and consultations. They review their options ( _the medicine is something we like to use earlier on, at this stage we'd recommend surgical)._

The day they go in late January, the sun is weak and low in the sky and there's snow piled everywhere, but it's not fresh snow. It's ugly, dirty, weeks old snow, half melted salt slush along the roadways and sidewalks,trampled through with paths of humans and animals.

They don't really talk on the way, they've talked so much in the past two weeks, there's nothing left to say. They're both exhausted from this process and the decision weighs heavy on Sansa. She thinks it weighs on Jon, too, and she wonders, not for the first time, if this is actually what he wants or if he's just agreeing because it's what _she_ wants.

It's what's best for them both, she reminds herself as they sit in the waiting room. Jon's leg is bouncing constantly and she wants to tell him to stop because it's grating on her nerves. There's a few other people here, too, obviously for the same thing.

A woman in her late twenties, dressed in a business suit. A girl that has to be younger than Sansa, sitting with a woman who's clearly her mother (the mother has a thin-lipped frown on her face and the girl has obviously been crying heavily and Sansa realizes, in an alternate universe where this happened just one year earlier when Sansa was still underage, that she and Catelyn would have painted the same picture). There's a woman who's age Sansa can't guess (her face is lined with a hard life) who keeps sending condescending looks at the young crying girl. There's a young couple huddled together in the corner whispering to each other and holding hands.

She and Jon aren't holding hands.

Jon is filled with anxious energy and it's putting Sansa more and more on edge but she can't exactly tell him to relax.

“Do you need anything?” he leans over and says lowly to her. “Are you allowed to eat or drink?”

“I'm ok,” she says back and he nods and she can tell he wishes she needed something. He must feel useless. _She_ feels useless.

When her name is called she goes into a sort of daze and follows the nurse's instructions and lays on the table and Jon stands next to her the whole time. He's holding her hand now and keeps holding it until they're back in the car and he's driving her home.

She hopes Jon paid attention to the doctor's instructions because Sansa hadn't. Her mind's been only half working since they called her name and she stares at the pack of paperwork in her lap and wonders what it's all for.

* * *

Jon _had_ been listening. She hadn't even noticed that he'd pulled out his phone and written a full set of instructions on his notes app. Of course he did.

“Do you want to come to my house?” he asks as they drive. “My mom can, I dunno, help? Talk?”

Sansa shakes her head and says “I think I'd just like to go home.”

He takes her home.

* * *

She doesn't say anything when she goes inside and she goes straight up to her room and pulls off her clothes and puts on her comfiest set of pajama bottoms and Robb's giant sweatshirt and she crawls under her covers and puts them over her head. For the first time in weeks, she isn't crying.

A little while later, she's lost all sense of time, her door opens. Arya doesn't say anything, she just slips under the blankets and curls up next to Sansa and at some point, they fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: pregnancy & abortion
> 
> I try to keep it nondescript, but it's a big part of the narrative this chapter and will be referenced from here on (not all the time, but it happened).
> 
> When I first started writing this, before I decided to post it, this is where I got to. I've plotted out about 4 parts and it's gonna get worse before it gets better, but I promise to try for a happy ending!


	3. Part Three

It falls apart like this.

After that day at the clinic they try to continue on like normal, but they can't. He doesn't seem to want to touch her and honestly she's not sure _she_ wants him to, either. And then she's resentful that he doesn't touch her. She knows there's no right answer but that doesn't matter at this point.

By the end of February she's made enough excuses that he stops asking if she needs a ride anywhere or if she wants to hang out. She hates that he stopped asking. She's glad that he stopped asking.

* * *

If her family was confused by her and Arya's sudden camaraderie, they're even more confused by the change in Arya and Margaery's relationship.

Arya and Marg never _fought_ or anything, not like Sansa and Arya did. But they never got along - too different, oil and water, and without the bonding element of being related.

Sansa watches her mother try to rearrange her mental puzzle with this new piece of information, when she finds the three girls up in Sansa's room watching horror movies on Netflix, curled up in Sansa's bed together (horror movies are, apparently, the one thing Arya and Marg have in common, much to Sansa's dismay).

Sometimes when Marg and Sansa go out, Arya comes along, to the mall or the movies. Arya used to tag along with Robb, Jon, and Theon, but she's doing that less with them and more with Sansa now.

Marg helps Arya pick out an outfit to _not_ impress the boy she _does not_ have a crush on, no sir, not Arya. Marg social media stalks Ned Dayne to make sure he's a good guy and Arya, red faced, tells her to stop and tries to get the phone out of Marg's hands, but Marg dances away and Arya chases her around the kitchen and Sansa _laughs_ until she cries.

* * *

By the time April rolls around, she and Jon are back to normal.

And by normal, she means pre-hooking-up-in-his-car normal. They don't talk, they barely acknowledge each other when he's over. It's like it never happened.

(Well, no, because sometimes she'll catch him looking at her with something like pain or sadness in his eyes but he always turns away the second she looks at him.)

* * *

It's in mid-April when Arya figures it out.

Jon's been even more sullen lately, Arya is telling her. Sansa's baking bread in the kitchen on a Sunday morning and Arya is sitting at the counter trying to get through her Lit homework. Sansa's trying to help, dough stuck to her hands, as she points to grammar mistakes in Arya's paper.

“I dunno what's wrong, he's just been weird,” Arya's saying around the pen in her mouth. Sansa has given up trying to explain that speaking with your mouth full of pen is bad manners.

“Jon's always been weird,” Sansa says and tries to keep her voice light. The bird pendant that she hides under her shirt feels suddenly heavy against her chest.

“I mean yeah he's usually quiet, but it's different, you know? He's been getting scholarship offers and he'll be happy one minute and then it's like _BAM!_ he's sad again. And it's been going on for a while.”

Sansa doesn't say anything to that, just continues kneading her dough and sneaks glances up at Arya. Arya's frowning and Sansa wants to stop her from doing whatever mental math she's doing in her head. She knows Arya is realizing _when_ Jon started to get weird and she doesn't want Arya to know. This new friendship between them has been one of the only things tethering her to sanity these past few months and Sansa doesn't know if she can handle it when Arya realizes what she's done and hates her for it.

She sees the exact moment it clicks in Arya's brain.

Arya looks at her and Sansa looks back. And then Arya is gathering her books and papers and she leaves the kitchen without a word.

* * *

Later that day, Sansa is in her room under her covers (she's _not_ crying, she swears), when the bathroom door opens. Arya gets under the covers and curls up next to her and they lay there for a little bit.

“Do you want me to beat him up for you?” Arya asks and Sansa can't decide whether she wants to laugh or cry so she chooses to hug Arya _hard_ instead. “Hey, watch it!” Arya protests, not trying that hard to shove her off.

They settle down and Sansa pulls the covers down so their heads are at least sticking out and she feels human again. After another bout of silence, Arya speaks again. “Sorry I freaked out. I just... I wasn't expecting that. I thought it was Joffrey or someone like him. Can I just... _how_?”

And so Sansa begins her story (the one she'd eventually told Marg late one night during a sleepover at the Tyrell house). She skips over the more sordid details (Marg had wanted to know _everything,_ but Sansa hadn't told her, she had wanted to keep some part of Jon just for herself), but even when she briefly alludes to losing her virginity in the pool house, Arya is scrunching up her face and making gagging noises and then they're laughing together and Sansa thinks that no matter what happens, she can deal with it with Arya by her side.

* * *

Robb's graduation party is actually Robb and Jon's graduation party.

Robb and Arya have altered all the banners mom got that say _Congratulations Robb!_ and added Jon's name to them. Sansa, Bran, and Rickon had helped, too. It had become a strange game between them all in the week leading up to the party. Sansa knew where her mom was hiding all the decorations and so she retrieved them and the five of them spent way too long cutting Jon's name out of construction paper and gluing it onto the end of banners and signs. To say her mom had a lot of decorations is an understatement.

On the day of the party, when they put the decorations up, Catelyn manages to keep the frown off her face when she sees what they've done. Bran and Rickon distract her while Sansa and Arya go into the kitchen and grab the tube of blue decorating icing they'd bought at the grocery store and hid in the cabinet and they pop the lid off the custom cake her mom had picked up this morning and add “ _and Jon!”_ to the writing on top.

Sansa can tell her mom is not pleased but she finds she doesn't give a flying fuck.

When Jon gets there and sees the altered decorations, he flushes red and Lyanna laughs loudly.

Theon asks why _his_ name wasn't added and Arya reminds him that his own party is tomorrow. Jon refused to have a party for himself so they decided to force one on him.

Sansa's glad that Arya doesn't seem to hate Jon, either, though she can sense a bit of tension between them now. She wonders if they've talked about it, but probably not. Neither of them are very good at talking about their feelings and she shudders in horror when she tries to picture the two of them having a stilted, awkward, sullen heart-to-heart.

Jon meets her eye from across the party at one point and smiles. She smiles back.

It's the most they've interacted in weeks.

* * *

It's both easier and harder to avoid Jon in the summer.

Robb and him are always hanging out together, as usual, but Robb is more determined than ever to spend every waking moment together because in the fall, Robb will go to WU and Jon to White Harbor. So Jon is always over even more than normal, but Sansa has Arya and Marg on her side and they help her get away from the house.

* * *

At Robb's (and Jon's) going away party, they finally talk again.

She's in the kitchen refilling bowls of snacks to bring outside when he's suddenly beside her. He takes her arm and gently tugs her down the hall and into the laundry room, where no one will think to look for either of them.

When he shuts the door, they can barely hear the voices of everyone outside and the silence is thick around them. He sighs and runs his hand through his hair and finally says “I didn't want to leave without saying anything.”

She nods. “Robb says you leave for White Harbor on Sunday.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you nervous?”

He laughs. “ _Yes.”_

She smiles and ducks her head down and starts playing with the pleats of her sundress.

“Don't be, you'll do great. It'll be just like high school except you'll get to live on your own,” she says. “You'll play hockey and go to class. It won't be that different.”

“Of course it'll be different,” he says and they're suddenly not laughing or smiling anymore. “I don't know what I'm gonna do without...” his voice breaks a little before he continues on, “without you guys. You know I'm shit at making friends. I only _have_ friends because Robb decided to adopt me.”

She finds herself taking his hand and he's suddenly very close to her and they spend a few minutes just existing in each other's space.

“You're better at everything than you think you are,” she says, keeping her voice low. He's so close to her now and she knows deep in her heart that she still loves him, even though she's spent the last few months telling herself she doesn't. “Everyone likes you,” she continues on and his hand tightens in hers. “You are the kindest, smartest person I know. I think you're the _best_ person I know.”

“Nah,” he says with a shaky smile. “That's you.”

“ _Liar_ ,” she laughs, pushing lightly at his shoulder, and then he's chuckling with her and there's a sort of tension in the air and she knows that if she leaned up and kissed him, he'd kiss her back. He won't kiss her first. He always lets her choose.

And she wants to. She _wants to,_ but she doesn't. Jon is leaving in a few days to start his new life and they can't start anything again and she doesn't want him to feel guilty (he would. Even if _she_ kisses _him_ , he'd feel guilty and think he'd taken advantage of her or something).

She steps back and they head out to rejoin the party and Arya gives her a _look_ and she just smiles and shrugs because everything is ok.

Everything is going to be ok.

* * *

Everything is _not_ ok.

Robb's absence leaves a gaping hole in her life that she honestly hadn't expected.

She loves Robb, obviously, but it's not like they hung out all the time or talked about their feelings or anything like that. But Robb has always been there. He was there the day she was born and then it was just them for two years until Arya. She's never not had him around and she finds she hates that he's not here. She hates his empty room and the way his booming laugh never fills the house.

She misses him fiercely.

She misses Jon, too, more than just as the boy she loves. She misses Jon as Robb's friend, hanging about the house. She even misses Theon and his swagger and his terrible jokes. She never really realized how much _life_ the three of them injected into the Stark household.

* * *

She gets her license, _finally_.

She'd meant to get it last year, but then Jon had been driving her around and it hadn't seemed so necessary. And then when everything went to hell, she hadn't been able to even think about doing it.

In late September, a few weeks after Robb leaves, she finally passes the test and she's given Robb's old car. She's furious because it's filled with trash and dust and it smells weird and she calls Robb and scolds him over the phone.

He laughs and ignores her lecture and asks her how everyone is surviving without him.

“We're great,” she says, voice haughty. “We all sit around every night and talk about how nice it is that you're gone. We finally have enough food in the house.”

“I miss you, too, little dove,” he says and she starts to cry.

* * *

She accepts a date from Cley Cerwin in November.

Margaery thinks this is a good step. Arya frowns.

It's a casual thing, a group of them are going to see a movie but Cley made it clear that this is a date. She likes the straightforwardness of that. He's nice and he doesn't try to kiss her or anything and she likes that, too.

It stays casual for a while. He seems to get the hint that she wants to take things slow and he doesn't push and she's both pleased and disappointed by this. There are moments where she almost wishes he'd be a jerk so she could dump him. But he's not, so she doesn't.

He makes her laugh, too, which is nice. He's not particularly funny, but he really tries and she appreciates it. He's got an ease about him and he's got no baggage. Everything about him is easy.

They kiss for the first time in mid-December. It's nice. It doesn't make her heart flutter like Jon's used to, but she wonders if that will ever happen for her again. Maybe Jon was a one time deal that she messed up royally.

* * *

Jon comes home for Christmas and he looks different. She doesn't understand how he can look like he's been away for years instead of just four months. He's growing out his beard and his hair is a little longer and she doesn't want to like it but she does.

He spends most of the time at his mom's house, but he comes and visits Robb when he can. He's over less than he would have normally been in high school because both Lyanna and Catelyn want more time with their respective sons. They only have a few weeks before the boys head back to school.

It's nice having Robb back. She'd gotten used to him not being here, but now that he's back, she's reminded just how much she missed him.

When he gets to the house, he sweeps her up in a bear hug and swings her around and she holds tight to him and breathes in his Robb smell.

She steals two more sweatshirts and when he texts, in January when he's back at school, she denies taking them.

It's one of these sweatshirts that she curls up in on the anniversary. She tells her mom she's sick and stays home from school and Arya asks if she wants her to stay home, too. She says no, and spends the day trying to read her old favorites, but Florian and Jonquil have lost their shine and she ends up staring out the window in a trance most of the day.

She gets a text around 2pm from Jon.

_Hope you're ok. Thinking of you._

And then

_This is Jon Snow_.

Like she would have deleted his number and forgotten about him. It's such a _Jon_ thing to think and she pulls Robb's shirt up around her face and she tries to breathe in his smell and she cries into the soft fabric and she honestly doesn't realize that she never texts Jon back.

* * *

Cley takes her to prom.

She and Marg spend hours getting dolled up. Marg has Loras on FaceTime from the High Garden Institute of Fashion to help them perfect their outfits and makeup. Sansa tries to get her pin straight hair to curl with little success.

When Cley gets to her house, he stares at her with his mouth hanging open and it's the first time she feels any sort of fluttering in her chest for him. Her mom takes a million pictures and Arya stands to the side rolling her eyes and her dad smiles but she can tell he's just waiting for them to leave so he can go back in and watch the game. Bran hugs her and tells her she looks beautiful and she ruffles his hair and leans down and says “have I ever told you you're my favorite?” Arya hears and scoffs. Rickon is running around like a loon and asking if he can get in the limo.

She feels happy and at peace and even though Robb isn't here, she loves her family and she's looking forward to prom.

She spends the night dancing, dancing, _dancing_ , until she's dizzy and dehydrated.

She and Marg are spinning each other around when Marg suddenly stops and pulls Sansa to her, hugging her tight.

“I'm gonna miss you so fucking much next year,” she says and Sansa nods and they hug under the flashing lights while everyone dances around them.

* * *

Summer is a strange time.

It feels like she's walking on a thin sheet of ice and she knows it's going to collapse under her. She's dreading college. She'd picked University of the Vale because she'd loved the campus and honestly, she kind of wanted a fresh start, out of the North.

But she's done high school now and college is looming ever closer and she starts to panic. Robb tries to comfort her and tells her how much fun it is. He's so certain she'll be fine that she almost believes it herself. Then she remembers that Robb knows the old her. He doesn't know that Arya and Margaery have been keeping her afloat for the past year and a half and she doesn't know what she's going to do without them.

Jon comes home for the summer, but if she's honest, she avoids him more than she ever had before.

She'd had sex with Cley on prom night, at Margaery's after party in one of the guest bedrooms. It was ok, Cley had been nothing but a gentleman, but she had a panic attack that night when she got home. She had started taking birth control after last year and she made Cley wear a condom but she spent the next week until her period started constantly wanting to throw up.

They hadn't had sex again and she'd broken up with him soon after and she feels sort of bad for that and hopes he didn't think he did anything wrong. He didn't. _She's_ wrong.

And so when Jon gets home from college, she finds she doesn't want to face him. She feels like he'll be able to tell and even though they haven't been together like that in almost seventeen months, it still feels like she betrayed him. It's ridiculous. She knows Jon doesn't expect anything from her. Jon never loved her.

* * *

She's so good at avoiding Jon that it takes until August for her to learn that he has a girlfriend.

Robb's saying something to dad at dinner one night and slips it in so casually she doesn't think she heard correctly. Except that Arya is staring at her (and... is _Bran_ staring at her?) and she knows she heard right. She manages not to choke on the roast her mom made and quickly excuses herself after that.

She goes upstairs and pulls out her laptop and spends the next half hour combing through every social media site but there's no Jon. He still doesn't have social media and she looks and looks but can't figure out who his friends at WHU are to stalk them and she doesn't even know the girlfriend's name to stalk _her._

Arya finds her in her room after dinner and sits on her bed.

“I wasn't sure if I should tell you,” she says.

“He's allowed to have a girlfriend.”

“Is he?” Arya asks. “Do you want me to beat her up?”

“That can't be your answer to everything,” Sansa laughs.

Arya sits for a little longer and there seems to be something she wants to say so Sansa gives her the space to say it.

“How do you know when you're ready?” Arya finally asks in a quiet voice and that's not where Sansa expected this to go.

“I don't know, honestly,” Sansa says. “I wasn't, until one night I just realized I wanted it to be Jon.”

Arya nods. “I don't think I am.”

“Then don't. Is someone pressuring you? Is it the Dayne kid?” Sansa feels outraged but then she sees Arya smile and shake her head.

“No, no one's pressuring me. It's just something I've been thinking about lately, and since you're leaving soon, I dunno who to talk to about this. I can't ask _mom_.”

Sansa leans forward and turns Arya to face her. “You can _always_ talk to me. You can call me or FaceTime me. I'll drive all the way back in the middle of the night if you need me.” Arya tries to roll her eyes but there are tears in them and it looses it's effect. “I can't promise I'll have the right answers. I barely know what _I'm_ doing half the time, but you can always talk to me.”

* * *

U Vale isn't close to Winterfell so mom decides not to bring Bran and Rickon, but she also refuses to not see Sansa off, either, and dad is needed to drive, so Uncle Benjen is called to watch the boys while mom, dad, Sansa, Robb, and Arya head down to move her in. Dad and Robb drive, mom rides with dad and most of Sansa's stuff, and Sansa and Arya ride with Robb.

Sansa and Robb spend the drive loudly singing top 40 songs while Arya groans and presses her hands over her ears.

Robb and dad haul her stuff up to her dorm and Arya disappears to explore and mom cries but pretends she's not. They go out to eat after and then her family leaves her. Mom cries and Arya pretends she doesn't care and Robb bear-hugs her and tells her she's gonna kill it and dad hugs her so tight she thinks she's going to break in half and when he pulls away, she sees tears in his eyes and she's not sure if she's ever seen her dad cry. If she didn't have a roommate, she absolutely would have planted herself face down into her mattress and cried for hours.

Her roommate is a girl named Myranda Royce who is bubbly and upbeat and it helps keep Sansa from falling into despair. Myranda holds out a flyer for a freshman bonfire that night and says “we're going” and doesn't give Sansa any room to argue.

* * *

She likes Randa, even if she can be a little flighty and Sansa's not sure she trusts her totally. But she's a lot of fun and she makes Sansa leave the dorm.

She meets a girl named Mya Stone from across the hall and she gets on a lot better with Mya. Mya and Randa don't get along super well, so Sansa finds herself hanging out with either one or the other and rarely together.

* * *

The fall goes by in a blur and she barely notices the time passing. She's in basic classes so none of her finals are overly hard and she doesn't have crazy term papers to write yet.

Christmas break feels strange. It's strange to be back in her bedroom. It's her room, but it also feels like it's not anymore. She spends as much time as she can with her siblings and she misses them more than she was prepared for.

She doesn't see Jon at all that winter break because he doesn't come to the Christmas Eve party.

“His mom has off work and I think they wanted to spend it together,” Robb says with a shrug.

* * *

Spring semester is more of the same.

She and Mya spend more and more time together and Randa drags her to parties.

It's at one of these parties that she meets Harry Hardying from Omega Chi. He's got sandy blonde hair and a wide toothy smile and he hits on her so hard she gets flustered and agrees to a date.

She has honestly never had anyone so actively pursue her as Harry does.

Harry takes her out to fancy restaurants and tells her she's the most beautiful woman he's ever met. He's charming and flattering and she should know better, but... but it's _nice_. It's nice to not have to make any decisions and be so openly desired. It's nice to show up at parties together and leave together. She can kiss him in public and no one is judging her for it. They don't have to hide and no one here knows her secret so no one is looking at her and thinking “should she be doing this?” (not that Arya or Marg ever said that to her and Marg had actively encouraged her to date, but still, it _felt_ like that.)

And the fact that Harry treats her just a little bit like shit gives her a weird sort of pleasure. She feels like _finally_ someone is treating her the way she deserves to be treated.

He's not _terrible_ to her. But sometimes at parties he'll flirt with other girls and then tell her she's being possessive and controlling. He expects her to look nice all the time, especially in front of his frat brothers. He gets a bit impatient with her when she won't have sex with him right away. He doesn't _push,_ but he acts like he's a martyr for waiting for her.

He invites her to summer with him on his parent's yacht and she almost accepts, but in the end she tells him she wants to go home and see her family. He shrugs and tells her she's missing out.

* * *

Sansa doesn't try as hard to avoid Jon this summer because she has Harry ( _does_ she have Harry or did he find some other girl to bring on his yacht?).

Last year she hadn't gone to any parties over the summer because Jon would be there. This year, she decides to attend one of Theon's ragers. Theon's sister Asha buys him alcohol and his dad is barely home so he has an empty house. Arya can't go, but Marg goes for support, just in case, and it turns out she needs it because no one told her that Jon's girlfriend would be there.

She's got red hair.

_How dare he_ , she thinks when she sees them together. Jon hasn't noticed her yet and she doesn't think he even knows she was coming. She'd told Theon _no_ originally but then decided last minute that it was stupid to spend her life avoiding one person.

She was wrong.

His girlfriend has red hair and she's not exactly gorgeous but she's got an energy about her that makes her really dynamic, Sansa can tell, even from across the room. She can _hear_ the girl from across the room, her voice carries and her laugh is loud and unreserved. Jon stands silently next to her, drinking from his solo cup as the girl talks to a group of people Sansa vaguely recognizes from Robb and Jon's grade.

“Oh shit,” Marg stage whispers to her. “You wanna go?”

Yes. She wants to run very very far away, but part of her also doesn't because _how dare he_. How dare he bring her here? How dare she have red hair? Part of her wants to run away and part of her wants to get drunk, find a random guy, and make out with him right in front of Jon.

“No, I'm fine,” she says back even though she's not fine and as she's saying that, Jon's eyes raise to meet hers across the room and he looks _very_ surprised to see her. He stands there, dumbfounded, for a moment before his eyes flit from his girlfriend to Sansa and she sees the same guilt-ridden sullen expression take over his face that had been so familiar in high school.

She _hates_ that she's the cause of it.

He'd been having a good time until she showed up and ruined everything, just like she always does.

He says something to the group of people he's with and then starts making his way through the crowd towards her and she turns to Marg and says “nope” and then runs out of the house.

Marg manages to keep up with her and they go to the Tyrell house and Sansa gets very drunk on Nana Olenna's expensive vodka and later on that night, after Marg is asleep and Sansa is laying there with hot, angry tears staining her cheeks, she pulls out her phone.

_Still have room on that yacht?_

* * *

Catelyn almost doesn't let her go.

But Sansa pulls out every trick she knows. She begs and pleads and cries crocodile tears and tells her mom how nice and rich Harry Hardying is. How his parents will be there, investment bankers, good people (she's never met Harry's parents and she actually doesn't even know if they'll be there).

Catelyn finally relents and Sansa heads off and spends the rest of the summer drunk in a bikini on a yacht having mediocre sex with Harry Hardying.

* * *

Next year she rooms with Mya instead of Randa.

Randa is fun but she's _a lot_ and it's nice having Mya as a roommate.

One day she's walking on campus and there's a group of pro-life protesters in the quad. Sansa's seen them before and it's never really bothered her, but today one of them gets in her way and tries to give her a flyer and when Sansa declines, the girl starts shouting in her face about murder.

She barely remembers shoving the girl away and making it back to her dorm.

Mya finds her, an unknown amount of time later, sitting on the floor next to her bed with her head between her knees.

* * *

She ends up telling Mya because she doesn't know how else to explain what happened. Mya listens and brushes her hands through Sansa's hair during the hard parts and pulls out her secret stash of Oreos that she's very protective over and they eat them in Sansa's bed.

“I don't know why I reacted like that,” Sansa says eventually. “I know we made the right choice...”

“Still,” Mya says. “It's a hard thing to go through and you don't need someone yelling in your face about how bad of a person you are, even though you're not. Right choice or not, I'm sure it weighs on you. Have you thought about therapy?”

“I don't need therapy,” Sansa says automatically and Mya drops it.

* * *

She's at a party and very drunk and she's lost Harry in the crowd. He'd been talking to some blonde girl and she _swears_ if he's doing something with her, Sansa will lose her shit.

She goes up the stairs of the frat house on wobbly legs and looks into every bedroom but she can't find Harry. She's at one of the doors and can't remember if she checked it or not when someone grabs her arm and pulls her into another room. At first she thinks it's Harry, so she doesn't fight, and it's not until she's thrown onto the bed that she looks up and realizes it's not.

She tries to get up but the guy pushes her back down. He's got dark hair and watery blue eyes and thick wormy lips but it's the coldness in his eyes that raises the panic in her. She starts to struggle and he holds her down and laughs when she screams. The music is so loud, no one is going to hear her.

“Lost?” he says with a smile as he pins her to the bed. He's shoving himself between her legs and he's got a hand on her throat and she keeps trying to scream but it's useless.

He's trying to get his pants open with one hand but can't quite seem to manage it and when the hand on her throat retreats, she twists her entire body away and manages to fall off the side of the bed. He curses and comes around the side and grabs her by the hair and drags her back up but she's feral now and she bites and scratches at his hands and arms and he _laughs_. He tosses her onto the bed and she rolls onto her back and _kicks_.

Her heel catches him in the side and she can see the pain flash across his face as her stiletto digs into the flesh. He stumbles back and mutters “you bitch” but she's up and she grabs the lamp from the bedside table and rips the plug out of the wall and _slams_ it into him. It's off center and she's never been particularly strong but it manages to catch him in the jaw and he grunts and is knocked sideways and she doesn't wait around, she runs out the door and down the hall and down the stairs and out into the open air and she's sobbing and gasping for breath and partygoers look at her strangely and she doesn't care.

She somehow makes it to the local police department and explains what happened and the officer sighs and says he'll write a report but there's not really anything they can do. She can tell he doesn't want to write the report. She feels the bile rise up in her throat as she thanks him and leaves and goes back to her dorm and ignores her phone when Harry texts her two hours later asking where she went.

She doesn't tell anyone it happened.

* * *

She goes home for Christmas and pretends everything is fine.

She hosts Christmas Eve with her mom and ignores Jon when he shows up and both Arya and Marg ask if she's ok at different points in the night and she says yes, she's fine, more _hors d'oeuvers_?

She's thankful that most of the guests have left when later in the night, drunk Uncle Edmure grabs her shoulder and she turns around and shoves him and says “don't touch me!”

Arya is down in the basement with Robb and Jon, and Marg left a little while ago so it's mostly just her parents and aunts and uncles and she laughs it off like it's a joke and then makes her excuses and goes upstairs to her room where she tears off her fancy dress and kicks off her heels and finds her biggest, least flattering pajamas and puts them on and curls under her covers and goes to sleep.

The next morning she waves off her mom's concerns and asks Rickon if he's excited to open his presents which creates just the right amount of chaos to distract her mom.

* * *

She and Harry are not doing well.

She's not sure they were doing great to begin with, but she's angry with him all the time now. She's furious that he abandoned her that night. She's furious that he's such a flirt that she went upstairs to look for him. She's furious he wasn't there to protect her. She's furious he didn't notice she'd left the party until hours later. She's furious he doesn't notice any change in her.

He takes her out to fancy dinners and flirts with the waitress and Sansa knocks back glass after glass of champagne. The first time they try to have sex after the incident, she starts to panic when he's on top of her and she pushes him off and he looks like he's about to ask her what's wrong and she tries to cover and says she wants to be on top and he accepts it.

* * *

It's time for her to declare her major and she doesn't know what to do. She'd started at U Vale as undecided, hoping inspiration would strike her at some point. Instead, she's become more and more unsure what she wants out of life as time goes on.

She picks Business Management because it sounds generic enough and applicable to a wide variety of jobs.

She's disappointed to learn, though, that it's a lot of math and she struggles through her finance, accounting, and tax classes. She debates switching to a major she knows she'd breeze through but she never does.

She throws herself into the work and Harry starts to get annoyed with her and one day Randa bursts into her room in a panic and says Harry had slept with some girl Randa knows.

"I'm _so_ sorry to have to be the one to tell you," Randa sobs and Sansa thinks _no you're not, you love this_. She likes Randa but she doesn't trust Randa.

When Sansa doesn't cry or get mad, Randa seems confused.

Sansa pulls out her phone.

_We're done._

She ignores the string of texts he sends back and when Randa leaves, she makes an appointment with a clinic to get an STD test. Randa's friend probably wasn't the only one Harry cheated on her with.

* * *

The next summer she no longer has a yacht to escape on, but she doesn't need it because Jon stays in White Harbor because he has a job. Of course he has a job. He probably works full time and goes to school full time and plays hockey and somehow still has enough time in the day to sleep a full eight hours and take his red-headed girlfriend on proper dates. (She's being unfair, she knows, but she can't help it. She can barely manage to pass a basic accounting class and never manages to get the right amount of sleep and sometimes forgets to eat and she's decided she's giving up on boys.)

Lyanna goes to visit him there, she hears Robb mention. Robb is also planning to go spend a few weeks in White Harbor and he's coordinating his trip to not overlap with Lyanna's. Theon's going, too.

Arya is headed off to college in the fall and Sansa spends the summer shopping with her and picking out a whole new wardrobe and perfecting Arya's punk rock, I-rolled-out-of-bed-like-this look.

Catelyn is in near hysterics that each of her children keep going farther and farther away. Robb had gone to Winterfell U, but then Sansa went off to U Vale and now Arya is going even further, to the University of Braavos, where she'll join their fencing team.

"Bran will end up going to _Asshai_ ," Catelyn wails at dinner one night as her children and Ned laugh.

"Nah, I'd go north," Bran says through a mouthful of spinach. Catelyn is distraught.

* * *

"You ok, kiddo?" her dad asks one night. Robb and Theon are in White Harbor, so their dinners are more subdued now. Mom is washing dishes in the kitchen and Sansa had gone to sit out on the back patio. She finds herself staring at the pool house when dad comes out.

"I'm fine," she says. Dad sits in the chair next to her and looks like he wants to say something, but he never does.

* * *

That fall she sticks to her guns and ignores every guy that flirts with her.

When she gets stuck in one of her math-based classes, she goes to the student center and gets a tutor. A senior named Podrick stutters through his explanations, his face bright red. It's adorable and Sansa feels a little bad for him, he seems incredibly shy around girls, but the ways he explains things to her makes _sense_ and she ends up getting better.

She enjoys her marketing and advertising classes much more. She even likes economics. Capitalism makes sense to her. Selling and buying things makes sense to her.

She still has no idea what she wants to do with her life, but she's getting through her classes.

* * *

The fourth anniversary goes by and she doesn't even notice it.

She notices two days later when she writes the date on one of her papers. She thinks maybe this is a good sign, even though she feels a heavy sadness when she _does_ remember.

* * *

She's studying one night in February for a Marketing paper. She wants to _crush_ this. She loves the class and the teacher and she really wants to do well. (Not like her Finance 2 class. Professor Baelish makes her feel dirty every time he _looks_ at her. Which he does, a lot. He's always reminding her of his office hours and offers to extend them for her _if she ever needs_. She does not.)

But she loves Marketing and so she's deep into her paper late at night when her phone buzzes on the counter. If it were a text, she'd ignore it, but it's a steady buzzing which means someone's calling and calling usually means an emergency.

She picks it up and answers before she really registers that it's Jon.

"You answered," he says, like he wasn't expecting it.

"Why wouldn't I?" she says back, immediately on the defensive.

He doesn't answer that question.

"The Jeep died," he says instead and she hears his voice slur a little bit. _He's drunk_ , she realizes with a start. Jon doesn't get drunk. She's never seen him drunk.

"What?" is all she manages to say.

"Mechanic told me it's useless to fix," he says without really hearing her. "He doesn't understand."

"Understand _what_?" she asks when he doesn't elaborate.

"I can't... it's... I can't _get rid of it_ ," he says like she should _understand_. "That's where it happened."

She isn't sure what he's talking about, specifically, but she finds dread pooling in her stomach and she doesn't want to know. She still asks "where _what_ happened?"

" _Everything_ ," he says with more emotion in his voice than she's ever heard. She wonders just how much he drank. "Everything," he repeats again, sadder. "You know that's where it happened. I've thought about it a lot. That time we went to the store but we didn't go to the store? I think we ripped it, that's when it happened."

She's standing, suddenly, in the living room of the little off-campus apartment she shares with Mya. She's about to calmly and rationally tell him to go sleep it off when he says "Do you think about her?"

"Her?"

"I think it would've been a girl."

She feels unfiltered fury slam through body and a sound that she can't describe escapes her throat.

" _Fuck you,_ " she hisses into the phone. " _How dare you._ Get rid of the _fucking_ car, Jon, and don't call me again."

She hangs up and then turns and throws her phone into the wall.

She'll have to try to find a way to patch up the chunk of plaster she takes out.

* * *

The next morning she feels like she's hung over, except she hadn't had a single drop of alcohol. She's hung over from her anger, and the proof of it is sitting next to her on her bedside table. The screen of her phone is so cracked she can barely see anything, but she manages to open her texts. There's one from Mya asking if everything is ok (she realizes she left all her books and papers and a half eaten bag of popcorn and a half drunk cup of tea sitting out in the living room when she'd stormed into her bedroom last night and also there's a chunk of plaster missing from the kitchen wall). And there's one from Jon.

_I'm sorry._

It came in early this morning, he must be hung over but he clearly remembers calling her.

She's calmed down enough to remember it, too, and she remembers how sad his voice was. He was _drunk_.

She's never truly thought about how Jon was handling everything. Those first few months she'd barely been able to keep her own emotions in check, she couldn't handle thinking about Jon. And then he went off to college and she couldn't _ask_. And then he'd gotten a girlfriend and she thought he'd moved on (but then, she'd had two boyfriends since Jon, and had _she_ moved on?).

She shouldn't have gotten so angry at him.

She always gets angry at him.

She's always angry.

Always.

She thinks Mya may have been on to something, last year.

* * *

She doesn't do it immediately. She puts it off, but eventually she makes an appointment with a therapist specializing in sexual assault. She knows she needs to deal with the Jon and the abortion stuff, too, but she's thought about it a lot and she knows that what happened to her that night at the frat house also plays a part and she'll need to talk about it at some point. And when she does, the last thing she wants is some therapist who won't understand.

She's so nervous before her first appointment she almost turns and leaves, but she manages not to. If there's one thing Catelyn Stark has taught her, its the importance of keeping your promises and she made this appointment and she will keep it.

Dr. Tarth is not what she was expecting. She's a large woman with short blond hair and a level expression. She isn't what Sansa was expecting, but she finds herself instantly more calm in Dr. Tarth's presence. There's something about the woman that makes her feel safe.

* * *

She _hates_ therapy.

They talk about Jon and the pregnancy and their decision and how Sansa _knows_ it was right, so why does she still feel horrible about it? They talk about hiding it from her family and why she felt like she couldn't tell her parents. They talk about Catelyn's expectations of her and Ned's inability to understand her and how he really never tried to. They talk about why she feels like she has to act like a secondary caregiver to her siblings. They talk about her decision to sleep with Cley Cerwin at prom, because she felt obligated to, not because he pressured her, but because it was _prom_ and she wanted to be normal and she had pressured _herself_ into it. They talk about Harry and why she put up with him for so long and how she liked that he treated her poorly. They talk about how much she drank that year. They talk about the parties. They talk about _that_ party. They talk about how she can barely wear nice dresses anymore, how she can barely wear heels. They talk about going to the police afterwards and how utterly alone she'd felt. They talk about how she _thanked_ the police officer for not doing anything to help her.

She fights and fights against Dr. Tarth. She yells and rages and says _horrible_ things. She leaves every session _ruined_ and promising herself she won't go back.

She keeps going back.

They talk about Arya and Margaery and Mya. They talk about Robb and Bran and Rickon. They talk about her classes and how hard she's working. They talk about how she went and got herself academic support when she felt she needed it. They talk about her love of marketing and advertising and how she thinks maybe she could do something with that. They talk about vacations she's taken and her childhood birthday parties and baking Christmas cookies. They talk about lemon cakes and herbal tea and Florian and Jonquil.

She finds, as the weeks and months go on, that she cries less and less.

* * *

Robb's college graduation party is, if possible, even bigger than his high school one.

Dad gets him a job at Stark Industries, obviously. Like everyone didn't see that coming. (Sansa ignores that she will likely also take a job at her family's company. She's outraged by nepotism until it's in her favor, she guesses).

Jon isn't there.

When she casually brings it up to Robb, he frowns and says that Jon couldn't make it. She can see it bothers Robb and she feels guilty.

She never reached out to him after that phone call. She never responded to his text the next morning. She's been in therapy for a few months now (having video sessions while she's at home in Winterfell), but she can't bring herself to text or call him. She's so ashamed of the way she acted, like she had a monopoly on their shared trauma. She's so ashamed that she never asked him how _he_ was doing, how _he_ was handling it. She wonders if he ever told anyone. Lyanna knew, but he'd never been able to tell his best friend, like she had with Marg. He didn't have any siblings to tell, like she had with Arya. Jon had other friends in high school, but he's not the sort of guy to go telling just anyone his feelings and she genuinely doesn't think he was close enough to any of them to tell them something like that.

Sansa has always been self-centered (something they have talked about in therapy), but she _knows_ Jon isn't here today because of her.

She finds out from Arya that he's going to grad school at the Citadel in Old Town for some advanced IT degree ( _nerd_ , Arya scoffs). Sansa just nods and goes inside to refill the snacks and she takes a moment in the kitchen to allow herself to _feel_ and she is so very, very proud of him.

It's enough to make her pull out her phone and she sends the text before she can overthink it.

_Heard about the Citadel. Proud of you._

And then after a few seconds.

_I'm sorry for the last time we talked._

She's about to put her phone back in the pocket of her sundress and go back outside when she sees the three dots pop up, then disappear. It happens a few more times before he replies.

_Thanks_

_I'm sorry too_

Sansa doesn't know if she should just jump all in and make it worse or not.

_What I should have said is of course I think about it. Her?_

She watches the dots start and stop countless times and then they disappear completely for two full minutes and she feels her breath catch in her throat. That was too much, she ruined it again.

Then he calls her and she answers.

She sneaks out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her bedroom.

"Hey," he says and it's _so good_ to hear his voice.

"Hey," she says back.

And then they talk.

They talk about school and his work (just a retail job at a bookstore close to campus) and how he did end up getting a new car, another Jeep ( _not new new,_ _I can't afford that_ ). They talk about her therapy (Jon gives a little laugh and says _I'm not going to therapy, but my roommate's girlfriend is a psych major and I think I'm her favorite subject)_. They talk about how she somehow fell into going for a marketing degree and how she doesn't know if she wants to take the job at Stark Industries and work for her dad. They talk about Arya's fencing tournament that they both watched on a livestream and how she definitely has a crush on her teammate Gendry, right? They talk about Robb's girlfriend Jeyne and how insufferable he is when he talks about her. They talk about what they think Bran will study in college and she does her best Catelyn impression, recreating the dinner scene about Bran going to Asshai. They talk about Rickon's new obsession with getting a dog and how he keeps pestering her parents for one. They talk about Jon's college best friend (don't tell Robb) Sam, who he met in some of his IT classes and who's going to the Citadel, too. Sam's girlfriend Gilly is coming along and the three of them already have an apartment secured close to campus.

They talk and talk and talk and it's not until someone's knocking on her door that she realizes how long they've been on the phone.

It's her mom, who opens the door without waiting for Sansa to tell her to come in.

"Are you ok?" her mom asks, and then notices she's on the phone.

"Sorry, mom," Sansa says. "Mya's having a crisis."

Mom frowns at her and says "we have guests."

"I lost track of time, I'll be down in a second."

Sansa waits until mom leaves and she can hear her footsteps on the stairs.

"Sorry," she says into the phone, where Jon is silent. "I guess I have to go."

"It's ok, I should've realized you were at the party."

"I'm sorry you couldn't make it," she offers and there's a silence between them because they both know why he's not. It's an olive branch and he takes it.

"I'll catch the next one," he says.

The next one is hers, in a year. She wonders if that's the next time she'll see him.

"Bye, Jon."

"Bye."

A year seems like a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to put in a quick thank you to everyone who's read and commented on this.
> 
> Writing this has been like a sort of therapy for me, I can't really explain it. I was nervous to post, and nervous for the reaction, and I have to say I really appreciate every single comment, kudos, and honestly anyone who's just giving this a shot.
> 
> Oh, and from here on out, I promise it gets better


	4. Part Four

It ends like this.

She texts him on his birthday and he returns it on hers.

If she reads an article or sees a meme that reminds her of him, she sends it to him. He sends her dog videos that make her laugh.

It's not often, once every few weeks. It's surface level and safe.

But it's something.

* * *

She continues therapy with Dr. Tarth and she feels good. She feels, for the first time in years, like she's keeping her head above water.

She stopped hanging out with Randa months ago and now her only friend here is Mya. She FaceTimes Margaery and Arya at least once a week now.

Arya is thriving in Braavos and no, she absolutely does not have a crush on Gendry. She _doesn't_.

They're on a three-way Skype chat one night when Arya, a little drunk on red wine, tells them she and Gendry slept together at the end of last year during one of their away matches and neither of them have mentioned it since.

Sansa and Margaery _freak out_. There's a lot of screeching and Marg actually gets up from her bed and does a lap around her room while Sansa laughs and claps and cries.

"Gods, don't _cry_ ," Arya is saying. "Tell me what to _do_."

Sansa and Marg spend the next hour coming up with more and more ridiculous scenarios for how Arya should confess her undying love for Gendry. Arya keeps yelling at them to _stop_ but she doesn't end the call and keeps drinking her red wine and in another half hour she's joining in and talking about hiring a small plane to write out _Gendry, I liked your dick_ in the sky.

* * *

It's her last year of college and she feels like she should be sad but she's not.

U Vale was nice, a good campus, but she's done here. She wants to go home.

Arya won't be there, still in Braavos, but Marg already said she'll also be moving back and Sansa is thrilled. She worried that their friendship would deteriorate so far from each other, but it hadn't and Sansa sometimes wonders, if what happened to her in high school had never happened, would they have remained as close? The experience had bonded them and Arya in a way she never could have imagined.

* * *

That Christmas, she _finally_ meets Jeyne Westerling in person.

Robb has been waxing poetic about her for a year and a half, but he never brought her home until now. Arya and Rickon had even started saying Robb made her up. Robb would send a picture of him and Jeyne in the group chat and either Arya or Rickon (or both) would respond _FAKE_ or send a link to a RealDoll website. Robb was never amused.

Jeyne is lovely, Sansa thinks, and Robb is adorably smitten. _(Adorably_ or _annoyingly_ , her mind whispers and she shuts that down. _Your initial reaction is not who you are,_ Dr. Tarth's voice sounds in her head. _Who you are is how you choose to act after that initial reaction_.)

Jeyne is from a middle class family down south and Sansa can see her mom trying to decide if this girl is worthy of her precious Robb. Sansa doesn't envy Jeyne's uphill battle on that one.

Jon shows up for Christmas Eve and Sansa wishes she were wearing something better (Dr. Tarth had told her that if wearing tight, short, fancy dresses made her uncomfortable, she didn't have to do it and so she hadn't, but now she feels frumpy in her bulky sweater dress with her thick stockings underneath and her flats.)

Jon looks _good_.

She'd spent the last five years avoiding him or ignoring him or trying not to look at him any time he was in the same room as her so when he shows up tonight, she's a little shocked at how old he looks. Not _old_ old, but when she thinks about Jon, she thinks about high school Jon and his hoodies and worn jeans and his Chucks and his helmet hair and his clean shaven face. He's twenty three now and she needs to reconcile the Jon in her head with this Jon.

The beard he started growing after high school is there in full force, thick and dark. His hair must be longer because it's tied up in a bun at the back of his head and he's wearing wire-rimmed glasses and he's got a dark gray sweater on and black jeans and she hates how much she likes this new look.

But she also _doesn't_ like it because he suddenly feels like a stranger.

* * *

He finds her in the kitchen, old habits die hard, it seems.

She thinks back to the night she kissed him here, he'd been so nervous and skittish after. This Jon seems more relaxed and confident than she ever remembers him being and she once again thinks that she maybe doesn't know Jon Snow at all anymore (and then she wonders if she _ever_ knew him, really).

"Hey," he says, leaning a hip against the counter next to her where she's laying out an array of cheeses and crackers on the charcuterie board.

"You made it," she says and immediately regrets it because she doesn't want to remind him of why he wasn't here for the last party. Luckily, if he thinks about this, he doesn't mention it.

"Robb would've killed me if I hadn't. He said he needs my support with Jeyne and your mom," Jon laughs.

"You've met Jeyne before, right?" Sansa asks even though she knows the answer. Jon nods and picks up a cracker from her arrangement and she gasps in horror. "Do _not_ ," she says, grabbing at his hand, but the cracker is already in his mouth. Jon just gives her a lopsided smile and doesn't look sorry at all.

"Aren't they supposed to be eaten?" he says, mouth full of stolen cracker, and she narrows her eyes at him.

"What's with the glasses?" she asks in retaliation, reaching up to tap the side of them. "You really went full computer nerd, huh?"

He scowls at her and _there's_ the Jon she knows. The familiarity of the expression slams into her, she almost gasps. She manages not to, but she must not do a good job keeping the expression off her face, because his scowl falls away and then he's just _looking at her._

They're very close. She didn't realize how close they were. She should step back but she's finding it hard to breathe and has he always smelled this good? Have his eyes always been that particular shade of gray?

His hand comes up and starts to brush a piece of her hair behind her ear and she can't _breathe_ and then suddenly someone comes into the kitchen and they jump apart.

Bran just sighs.

"Don't let Arya see you, I don't think she'd hesitate to skewer you with her new fencing sword," he says in Jon's direction before grabbing the tray of appetizers he was sent in for and heading back out to the party.

They stand there for a few seconds before turning accusingly on each other.

"You told _Bran_?" she says, gesturing at the door where her little brother just exited.

"It wasn't me!" Jon says back, "he's _your_ brother, he must've heard you and Arya talking."

"Not uh," she's saying and she sounds like a child. "Arya and I never say your name."

He doesn't respond to that and she realizes what she just admitted to. That she and Arya talk about him, in reference to his relationship with her and not just as Robb's friend. That she and Arya talk about him, _present tense_.

"I've gotta get this out," she says and grabs the charcuterie board and leaves the kitchen and she sighs because she's going to have to tell Dr. Tarth about this (it's something they talk about a lot, actually, the way she simply chooses to ignore people and things that she can't handle).

She spends the rest of the party doing what she does best: avoiding Jon. Maybe she just won't tell Dr. Tarth about this (she will).

* * *

Jon gets a dog.

It's a tiny thing, an albino husky, the runt of the litter.

He sends Sansa a picture of him holding it (with the caption: _I guess I got a dog?)_ and Sansa finds herself staring at the photo with a forkful of salad stopped halfway to her mouth and Mya asking what's wrong. It is, without a doubt, the best photo she's ever seen in her life (she doesn't make it her home screen. She _doesn't_.)

It takes her way too long to recover before she can respond and when she does it's a series of heart emojis and she doesn't even care if that's crossing some sort of weird line.

She finds out he's named it Ghost and she actually hugs her phone to her chest when he sends another series of photos. Photos of Ghost in what must be Jon's apartment and then one of the pictures has a man with a round face in it (Sam, she thinks, remembering Jon's roommate's name). There's another picture with a pretty girl holding Ghost in her lap and Sansa studies that one extra hard, but then realizes the arm around the girl belongs to Sam and Sansa remembers Jon mentioning Sam's girlfriend. Her relief is _palpable_ and it's one more thing to add to the list to tell Dr. Tarth.

_I'm going to steal him from you_ , she texts him, along with another set of heart emojis.

_Sam says you're not allowed._

* * *

That May she graduates and Robb proposes to Jeyne and Sansa doesn't even care that his engagement party overtakes her graduation party.

She loses track of the day. There are so many people here, between the Starks and the Westerlings and Robb and Jeyne's high school and college friends, coworkers. It's a lot. She puts herself on Rickon duty and keeps him from making too much of a scene. Jeyne's parents seem less than thrilled with the engagement and Rickon is a teenager now but he's still as wild as ever so she tries to keep the peace the best she can.

When Jon shows up, she's in the middle of chatting with some relative of Jeyne's, making small talk with a death grip on Rickon's shoulder as he fidgets. She doesn't get much of a chance to see him or talk to him except for one brief moment where they cross paths and she hugs him (she _hugs_ him, she hasn't _touched_ him in so long and she doesn't know why she does it and they hold the hug for just slightly too long but luckily Robb, standing next to them, doesn't seem to notice. Sansa isn't so sure Jeyne doesn't.)

When she turns around, she finds her mom looking at her, too, and Sansa doesn't have the energy to deal with it, so she goes back inside and starts grabbing more drinks to bring out to the coolers.

After the party ends and most of the guests have left, it's the Starks and Jon cleaning up the house. Sansa watches him gather plastic cups and plates and haul them into the kitchen, chatting easily with Arya and Bran and she thinks maybe they're really back to normal. Maybe things don't have to be weird or strained and she feels a rush of gratitude for Arya and Bran for not being upset about what happened (how Bran found out she _still_ doesn't know).

* * *

Jon has to go back to Old Town after the engagement party because he has a job there and Ghost and his apartment and she wishes he could stay the summer. She wants, desperately, to go back to the summer before everything happened when they all spent three months lounging around the pool and watching movies late into the night and cooking s'mores around the fire pit. Everything was easy and fine and she had never hurt Jon and the world had still held just a little bit of magic.

But they can't go back, so she tries not to dwell on it (and when she thinks about it, she realizes, selfishly, that she wouldn't change kissing Jon in the car that day.)

She's feeling a bit off track lately, anyway, because she moved back to Winterfell and she's still doing tele-sessions with Dr. Tarth, but it isn't the same. She should find a therapist up here, Dr. Tarth has given her a list of recommendations, but she can't bring herself to do it. She feels untethered and lost and she ends up taking a job at Stark Industries as a Junior Account Manager and it has nothing to do with her major or anything she's interested in, but she's not sure what else to do.

She eats lunch with her dad and Robb and Uncle Benjen when they're available. Most of the time her dad isn't but on the days he is, it's nice. She and her dad have never been close, but now that they have some forced alone time, he seems to be making an effort.

Dad loves her, she knows this, and she thinks she finally accepts it in those afternoons when they sit in his office and she laughs over his inability to work his new smartphone and he grumbles about why they can't just go back to sending letters by ravens in his best grumpy old man voice.

* * *

Robb and Jeyne move in together and come over to the house every Sunday for dinner. Sansa is back to living in her old room and she doesn't love that, but she and Marg are in the works for their own place soon.

One night they're having dinner and Arya is on Skype on Rickon's iPad, propped up against a dish of mashed potatoes where her seat normally is, and Bran is down from Hardhome University for the weekend and it's just like old times (well, with Jeyne added).

Sansa _likes_ Jeyne.

"I think I like Jeyne more than you," she teases Robb as she takes a sip of her wine.

"I thought _I_ was your favorite," Bran interjects and Arya scoffs, just slightly delayed, via Skype.

"Please, I'm her favorite," Arya says, but she's drowned out by Rickon's loud insistence that _no, I am_.

They all start arguing over who Sansa's favorite is, as Jeyne giggles and Robb sputters indignantly and says "well _none of you_ are _my_ favorite."

"No one cares who your favorite is, Robb," Arya tells him and then they all go back to fighting over who Sansa loves the most. Mom and dad are laughing, not taking sides and letting this run it's course (they've found, over the years, that it's best to let the kids fight things out on their own).

Sansa watches this all happen and continues to eat her dinner with a smile on her face.

She's happy.

She's very, very happy.

* * *

She goes on a few double dates with Robb and Jeyne and guys that Robb tries to set her up with. There's a guy he went to college with and someone from his department at work, but none of them pan out.

Robb seems determined to find her love ( _love is wonderful,_ he sighs and Sansa resists the urge to tell him that she knows, she's been in love with his stupid, sullen best friend since she kissed him in the parking lot of a CVS all those years ago).

She helps Jeyne plan the wedding, and she's good at organization and party planning and Jeyne seems relieved. Sometimes she tries to call Arya into the planning but it never goes over that well ( _what do I know about flowers, Sansa?)_

Sansa isn't the maid of honor, Jeyne has a sister, but Jon will be the best man (Bran and Rickon give Robb permission for this and even opt out of being groomsmen altogether so that Jeyne doesn't have to scramble to find more bridesmaids, and it ends up being Theon that complains the loudest. Jon and Theon agree to split best man duties - Jon will do most of it but Theon gets to plan the bachelor party and that seems to placate him).

She, Jeyne, and Jeyne's sister Eleyna are working on the seating chart for the reception one afternoon. Jeyne is debating between having her bridal party sit at it's own table or letting them go off with their friends and family. They move people around their diagram for both of these scenarios.

When they make the chart with the bridal party at it's own table, Sansa puts herself next to Jon and she sees Jeyne give her a look out of the corner of her eye. Neither of them say anything, but when everything's arranged, Jeyne says "I like this one."

* * *

Jon doesn't come home that Christmas, and Robb tells the rest of them that Lyanna decided to take some vacation time and she's going down to Old Town to visit. They're going to spend the holidays there and see all the historic sights and the museums.

Arya comes home and brings Gendry Waters.

The minute Arya arrives, front door still open as Gendry lugs both of their suitcases in, she stands in the living room, hands on hips, and tells the entire Stark family that if they say _one word_ , she and Gendry are getting back on a plane to Braavos.

At the Christmas Eve party, Maergary says "it's _so_ nice to meet you, Gendry, Arya tells us you're _really impressive_ with your sword."

Gendry turns bright red and Arya throws a sugar cookie at Marg and Sansa tries not to laugh and apologizes to Gendry.

Gendry is nice and quiet and _large_. He dwarfs Arya in physical size but when she watches them interact, Sansa likes to think that Arya's personality makes her stand just as tall and she likes that Gendry doesn't use his size to stand _over_ her.

She's helping her mom in the kitchen when Catelyn brings him up.

"This Gendry, what do we know about him?" mom asks. (Sansa knows a lot, actually. She knows that Gendry was an orphan and in the foster system but got adopted by a nice, but not wealthy, couple and he fences and doesn't like coffee and is terrible at Scrabble. She knows all of this, and all of it her mother will hate.)

"We know Arya likes him," she responds. "And Arya knows her own mind, so I trust her. If she likes him, I like him."

Mom looks like she's about to say something else, mouth twisted in a half frown (and Sansa recognizes this expression as her Jon Snow expression and she _hates_ it).

"Don't," Sansa says. "Just let her be happy, ok?"

Catelyn looks shocked and Sansa takes the tray of food back out to the party.

* * *

She helps process RSVPs with Jeyne in Robb and Jeyne's living room, writing down yeses and nos on a master list of guests with what food option they chose. Jeyne has one envelope in her hands and she reads the name on the front, opens it, reads it, and then with a subtle clearing of her throat, slides it across the table to Sansa.

It's Jon's writing and he RSVPs yes, he's coming, he wants the steak, and he won't be bringing a plus one.

She's smiling and Jeyne is smiling and Robb sits eating a ham sandwich and watching hockey on TV, oblivious.

* * *

They're fitted for their bridesmaids dresses, Arya flying in during spring break. It's not the easiest, trying to find a dress that flatters everyone's shape, but they manage to all agree (mostly, Arya grumbles the same over every dress and lets out a _fine_ at the one they choose). Sansa's thankful that the dresses are blue and not some color that would clash terribly with her hair (and if she's honest, this blue really brings out her eyes).

As it gets closer and closer to the date, Catelyn and Jeyne's mom get more difficult to deal with, both having strong opinions of what should and should not be done, and Jeyne becomes more and more anxious. Sansa and Eleyna try their best to reign in their respective mothers, but it's not as effective as it should be (and Sansa thinks, maybe, that her mom is trying so hard to control this wedding because she feels like she's losing control of everything else; Robb is getting married, Arya is dating a boy she doesn't approve of, Bran is studying _philosophy_ at school, and she could never control Rickon anyway). Eventually even Robb notices it happening and has a talk with Catelyn that Sansa isn't present for. Catelyn calms down after that, and Sansa never asks what they talked about.

* * *

Robb tries to make them have joint bachelor and bachelorette parties, but Jeyne puts her foot down and says no.

"I love your brother," Jeyne explains to Sansa on the way to White Harbor. "But sometimes I just need some time without him, you know? I don't want to spend my bachelorette party babysitting my fiance."

They spend a day at the spa and eat a fancy dinner and then go clubbing after that. Sansa stays sober and watches over everyone. She still dances, though, and she forgot how much she likes _dancing_. When she's out of breath and in need of some water, she sits at the bar and drinks her water and Arya plops down on the stool next to her.

Arya orders herself another drink and then leans over and says, "I miss Gendry. Fuck, I think that idiot made me _love_ him."

Sansa buys her that round.

* * *

When they get back to Winterfell, she watches Jeyne gleefully pull out her phone and begin to question Robb about all the photos Theon sent her from the bachelor party.

Robb looks horrified at Theon's betrayal and Theon is _cackling_.

"This is why you're not the best man!" Robb yells and Theon flips him off and proceeds to ignore him and Jon is smiling and shaking his head.

It's a week before the wedding and Jon is here for a whole ten days. He spends most of his time at the Stark house, even though he's technically staying with his mom.

With only a week left there's not too much left to do, just checking and re-checking and making calls to confirm appointments and trying to keep Jeyne and Robb calm (and, honestly, Catelyn and Jeyne's mom).

When they're in a room together, Sansa and Jon gravitate towards to each other. They don't talk about it, but she has decided she's not fighting this anymore and he seems to have made the same choice. They don't kiss or do anything else. They don't tell her family anything.

But Jon will put his hand on the small of her back as they stand in the kitchen going over the itinerary for the rehearsal dinner. At night when they all put a movie on to unwind, they sit next to each other and she leans into him. They talk and laugh in a way they never did publicly in high school.

* * *

Everyone notices.

Arya and Bran already know, obviously, and she's grateful for that because it's Arya that grabs Robb when Robb first notices.

They're all out back by the pool, the Starks and Westerlings and some friends, having a casual barbecue two days before the wedding. She and Jon are standing under the eve of the pool house and Jon reaches up to the bird pendant around her neck.

"You still have this," he murmurs, hand tracing the outline of it, fingertips brushing her skin. She shivers.

"Of course. The old chain broke and I had to replace it a few years ago, but yeah," she says, voice just as low.

His eyes flick up to hers and his jaw tics and he says "you wore it?"

"Always."

There's something in his expression she can't quite make out and this is when Robb notices, with them standing too close to each other and Jon's fingertips tracing patterns along her collarbone.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Robb tense up and start to come over to them. Jon sees it, too, and lowers his hand just as Arya comes out of nowhere and grabs Robb's arm and pulls him inside the house before he can make a scene, Jeyne hustling quickly behind.

Jon sighs.

"I guess I should handle that," he says.

"I can, he's my brother."

"Nah," Jon shrugs. "I'm the one he'll be mad at. I should explain. Plus, you might need to talk to your parents."

She looks around and Catelyn and Ned have also noticed and are staring at them. Ned looks utterly baffled, but not upset. Catelyn looks like she's working new pieces of information into her puzzle and she's not sure she likes the picture.

"I'm gonna tell him everything," Jon warns and she pauses for a second and then nods her consent.

Jon gives her arm a squeeze and goes inside after Robb and when Sansa looks around, she sees Theon and Rickon eyeing them up, too. Theon is frowning and Rickon is the spitting, confused image of dad. Arya and Jeyne come out of the house, Arya frowning and Jeyne looking worried.

She sighs and wonders if she should make a mad dash away from the party. Go inside, grab Jon, get in his Jeep and drive away.

Just drive and drive and _drive._

* * *

She ends up explaining to Theon first, when he corners her and she's touched that he seems concerned for her and he tells her that _if Snow ever hurts you, little dove, you tell me and I'll kick his ass for you_. And then he kisses her on the forehead and hugs her around the shoulders and that's that.

At some point, what feels like hours later, Robb comes back outside with Jon following behind. They both look a little shaken up, but Jon isn't sporting a black eye, so it went better than Sansa thought it would. Robb goes and grabs a beer from the cooler and takes a long drink from it. Then his eyes find Sansa and he comes over to her and grabs her up in a bear hug and says "you could've told me. I would've _been there_."

When he lets her go, she has to go inside and she goes into the laundry room off the kitchen and shuts the door and braces herself against the wall and breathes deeply and methodically in and out so that she won't cry. If she cries, she'll have to redo her makeup.

She won't have to deal with her mom until after their guests leave. Catelyn is nothing if not a perfect hostess, and she won't make a scene with Jeyne's family there.

By the time this happens, Arya has let Rickon know what's been going on (she doesn't tell him about the pregnancy, just that Sansa and Jon had been secretly dating in high school. Sansa is grateful for this. It's one thing for Robb to know, but she's not sure she wants Rickon to. She's honestly still not sure how much Bran knows, or guesses).

When the last of the guests leave and Catelyn shuts the door and stalks back into the kitchen where Sansa and Jon are, there's a line of Stark siblings standing protectively in front of them. Ned is there, too, he's been silent this whole time and Sansa _knows_ Jon wants to talk to him, but he hasn't. Catelyn looks like she's about to start demanding answers when Ned puts his arm around her and suggests they go to bed and let the kids clean up.

When Catelyn relents and they both leave, the Stark siblings and Jon and Jeyne begin to clean up the mess in silence. Even Rickon cleans without argument, like he can sense something is happening.

When everything is as cleaned up as it's going to get that night, they all stand in the kitchen. Rickon and Bran are the first to leave, heading upstairs to their rooms, Bran throwing a look over his shoulder at Sansa as he guides Rickon away. Next is Robb and Jeyne, who are going back to their apartment. Robb doesn't say anything, but he gives Jon an awkward handshake that turns into a half hug, like they're not quite sure what they should be doing. Arya snorts and this makes Sansa and Jeyne giggle and then Robb is coming over and bear-hugging her again.

When they're gone, Arya sighs and says "I guess I'll leave you two alone. Please don't bone in the kitchen, we eat here."

Sansa feels herself flush and Jon runs a hand over his face as Arya cackles to herself all the way up the stairs.

They're alone in the kitchen now.

She hasn't been alone with Jon, truly alone with no threat of interruption, since his going away party when he'd pulled her into the laundry room to say goodbye. That feels like a lifetime ago. Different people.

She _is_ different.

She's been through so much that Jon doesn't know about. There's so much she doesn't know about what Jon's been doing. All these years, all this space.

He doesn't know about Cley or Harry (maybe he does, maybe he heard about them like she heard about _his_ girlfriend, and she realizes she never even learned the girl's name.) He doesn't know about the frat party. He doesn't know about Mya Stone or Myranda Royce or her creepy Finance teacher or a million other little things. It breaks her heart to think about the million little things she's missed in _his_ life.

She wonders if they're just strangers now, or if there's something deep and indefinable and unchangeable about a person and so they'll never truly be strangers.

She thinks it's the latter, as he closes the few steps between them and wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her hair.

  
"Missed you." The words rumble from deep in his chest and she wraps her arms just a little tighter around his middle.

And she thinks, _yes_ , she knows him; deep down, she _knows_ him.

* * *

The rehearsal dinner is almost a disaster.

They get through the rehearsal fine enough. Everyone learns their cues and Theon and one of Jeyne's friends walks down the aisle followed by Arya and one of Jeyne's brothers and Sansa walks with the other and Jon walks with Eleyna right before Jeyne and her dad. The flower girl (Jeyne's niece from her oldest brother) is adorable and has to be coaxed down the aisle by her mom with a My Little Pony doll.

The dinner, though, that's where it goes wrong.

They're having it at a quaint little place outside Winterfell proper but before you hit the deep forest. It's in a refurbished barn with fairy lights all around and everything is going fine until Jeyne's dad gets a little too drunk and gets up to make a speech and talks about how devastated he and his wife are that their precious Jeyne had to move so far North to be with Robb (and the implication is there, not far beneath the surface, that the Westerlings don't approve of this at all) and Sansa can _feel_ her mom tense up and Jeyne looks like she's going to cry and Robb's jaw is tight and Ned's hand is on his shoulder.

Sansa is trying to come up with something to _do_ to make this right without causing any more issues between their families when Mr. Westerling ends his speech, goes back to sit down, and accidentally knocks a glass off the table and onto Jeyne's lap, spattering red wine onto her beautiful rehearsal dress and Robb's suit jacket.

"Oh shit," she hears Arya whisper from next to her. "I should kick his ass."

"That can't be your answer to everything," she whispers back.

Eleyna is trying to rub the wine off Jeyne's dress (though it's useless with just a napkin dipped in water) and then Ned is standing up and thanking everyone for attending and toasts to the couple and everyone at the dinner understands to go back to eating like nothing happened.

Afterwards, as they're all leaving, Uncle Benjen comes up behind them and says "some dinner, huh? Wonder what the actual wedding's gonna be like."

"It will be perfect," Sansa says with a confidence she doesn't have.

* * *

The wedding _is_ perfect.

Sansa walks down the aisle with her Westerling brother with Jon and Eleyna behind them. She tries not to stare too much at Jon, but she's never seen him in a full tux before and he cleans up _so well_ , she can't help herself (she tries not to notice that he can't seem to stop looking at _her_ either).

Jeyne is beautiful. Her dad walks her down the aisle looking just a little guilty and he hands her off to Robb and shakes Robb's hand without really looking him in the eye. Robb and Jeyne grin through the entire ceremony and Sansa can't help but cry the whole time. Arya pokes her in the side and hisses "stop!" but Sansa can't. She's got tears streaming down her face and she's trying _so hard_ to keep any noise from escaping her (out in the seats, her mom is _not_ trying to be quiet about it) and she looks up and catches Jon's eye and he's trying to suppress a smile and he's _laughing_ at her, the jerk. She can't help it if she cries easily (Dr. Tarth assures her it's a perfectly fine way to express her feelings).

The guests go inside as the wedding party takes photos and even though Jon and Sansa aren't technically paired, Jeyne seems to maneuver them for some shots together anyway. Sansa's favorite is the one of her, Jon, Robb and Arya (she'll keep it in a frame in her room for years to come).

At the reception, Jon has to stand up and make a speech and it's stilted and he's clearly so uncomfortable having to speak publicly, but it makes his speech all the more endearing and by the end he has the whole room clapping and Robb is wiping tears from his eyes as he stands and hugs Jon and Sansa thinks back, to that day almost sixteen years ago when Robb dragged a silent, sullen boy home from little league hockey and presented him proudly to the family and proclaimed that they were best friends (Robb, smiling wide and Jon, head ducked down with his hands in his pockets).

Eleyna gives a speech that Sansa is sure is beautiful, but she's barely paying attention because Jon has sat back down next to her, and his knee is bouncing and his hands are shaking and she takes one in hers under the table and he squeezes, hard. She thinks that maybe she can even hear his heartbeat thundering in his chest (though she knows this isn't true and maybe it's just her own).

They eat and drink and the father/daughter and mother/son dances happen and then when the dance floor is open to everyone, she drags Jon out and ignores his protests.

They didn't get to go to his prom together (like she had imagined, around Christmastime before everything went wrong, she'd fantasized that maybe by prom they'd be brave enough to tell Robb and the family and they could go together), and she'll be damned if she doesn't get to dance with him tonight.

He's so bad at dancing but she doesn't _care_. Arya joins them with Gendry in tow and Rickon moshes into their group and Bran is hanging back but Margaery sees this and takes him by the arm and pulls him out, too, and Theon's there with his girlfriend (another Jeyne, and Sansa is shocked to learn it's Jeyne Poole, who had gone to elementary school with her but moved away in fifth grade). By the third or fourth song in a row of this, Jon has given up any sense of embarrassment and is swinging Arya around as Gendry twirls Sansa and she thinks that maybe this is the happiest she's ever been, with everyone she loves in the same room.

* * *

She spends all night dancing with Robb and her dad and Bran and Rickon and Arya and Margaery and Theon, but mostly she dances with Jon. There's a slow dance and he's got her hand in his hand and the other around her waist and he's pretending to be clumsier than he actually is to make her laugh.

Robb and Jeyne leave at some point (to hoots and hollers from Theon and a couple of Robb's college friends) and eventually the night comes to an end.

They all have rooms in the hotel and she finds herself leaving the reception with Jon, hand in hand. They haven't done anything more than hug and they seem to have a mutual understanding that anything further _shouldn't_ happen.

Jon still has another year of grad school left and he'd told her earlier in the week that he wants to move back North, but he doesn't know where he'll be able to get a job. They shouldn't start anything because they won't be able to continue it.

But when they get into the elevator, she asks him what floor he's on and presses the button and doesn't press her floor. She follows him to his room and stands behind him with her hand in his hand as he unlocks the door and she follows him inside. It's dark and he doesn't turn on the lights because that would break the magic and she tries to control her nerves.

"We don't have to do anything," Jon murmurs to her, hand coming up to cup her jaw, thumb brushing over her cheekbone. "We can just sleep."

She shakes her head and turns around and sweeps her hair over her shoulder so that he can pull the zipper of her dress down. She hears him take a deep breath and she feels the fabric loosen around her and his knuckles brush along her spine as he lowers the zipper and his breath comes out hot on the back of her neck and then he's kissing the top of her spine and her dress is dropping to the floor. She finds she's shaking and she can't tell if it's from anticipation or nerves (she's hasn't had sex in _years_ , not since Harry, she hasn't even wanted to until now. Until Jon.)

( _Always Jon_ ).

She hears him say again that they don't have to do anything, he turns her around and takes her shaking hands in his and says again "we can just sleep," and she shakes her head and kisses him.

It's just like she remembers.

  
His lips are soft against hers and his hand comes up and cups the back of her head and the other comes to rest lightly on her hip and it's been _so long_. (When had she last kissed him? She can't even remember and that devastates her.)

She pulls at his jacket and the white shirt underneath has too many small buttons and they're both fumbling trying to get them undone and when they do, he tries to take it off but they've forgotten the bowtie and then they're laughing and he's working to undo that knot while her hands work to get the suit pants open and she spends more time touching him through the fabric than she does getting the buttons and zipper undone and he curses at her and knocks her hands away to do it himself. She reaches back and undoes her bra and lets it slide off her arms and she watches his eyes go down and he groans.

"Gods you're beautiful," he's saying and he's reaching for her, pulling her to him and kissing her until she's dizzy.

Then they're on the bed and she feels safe. He kisses her _everywhere_ and whispers against her skin and her heart is pounding so loud in her ears she can't even hear what he's saying and then his fingers hook in her lace underwear and he pulls them down her legs and his hands part her thighs and when he puts his mouth between her legs her blood _sings._ When she comes, every muscle in her body trembles violently and tears leak from her eyes and he moves back up and kisses her and wipes the tears away and she thinks maybe someday she'll tell him about everything that happened but she doesn't have to tonight. She _trusts_ him.

“We can stop,” he says, thumb wiping at the tears on her cheek (she wonders if he suspects something, she's never cried before, during).

She doesn't _want_ to stop. She wants this, she wants Jon, even if it's just for tonight (a voice the back of her mind tells her _of course it's not just for tonight_ ).

He's got a pack of condoms in his bag and he shoots her a guilty look complete with puppy dog eyes and it makes her laugh and she puts her hands over her face so he won't see how much she's smiling. That he bought them, that he'd been hoping for this, that he had let her choose, she feels wonderful.

She wonders if she should ask to be on top. After the incident, she hadn't been able to handle Harry on top and she wonders if there will be an issue and she doesn't want to freak him out. She doesn't want to ruin this (the way he's looking at her, though, makes her feel like nothing she could do could ruin this). She knows he wouldn't mind her being on top, but she wants to try, she wants to see if she can feel safe.

He leans back over her, keeping his weight on his forearms and she wraps her legs around him and it feels different. He's grown, his chest and shoulders are broader, the beard is new as is the trail of hair down his stomach, it feels different and achingly familiar at the same time. When he eases into her, she curls her arms around his back and pulls him as close as she can and buries her face into his shoulder.

It's so much. She remembers their first time, how overwhelmed she'd felt, and it almost feels like that now. She's so aware of him, inside her, on top of her, the muscles shifting under his skin. The groans that vibrate from deep in his chest and through her entire body. The whispers in her ear of _gods, love, missed you, missed you, missed you._

She's whimpering into his shoulder, squeezing her eyes shut as he slowly moves inside her, drawing it out, and the tension coils in her belly and she's saying _Jon, Jon, yes, just like that_ and she's going to come so soon, it's too soon, she wants this to last forever. It seems he does too, he's going so slowly (later that night they'll do this again and it won't be this soft and slow, but this first time, it's meant to _last)._

He pulls back and she opens her eyes into his and he puts his forehead to hers and they breathe in each other's air as she comes and she's only somewhat aware of Jon following after and she's floating and sated and safe.

* * *

"I never asked how it went with Robb," she says later, when they're laying with her head on his chest, drawing constellations on his skin with the tip of her finger. "I mean obviously he didn't kill you, but how did it go?"

Jon sighs. "It was awkward. And I don't think he was happy with me, but honestly, I think it was more because we didn't tell him. I think he was upset we didn't trust him and he couldn't be there for you."

"Maybe we should have," she says. "Maybe it would have been easier. Did you ever tell anyone?"

"Sam," he says. "And Gilly. Gilly was psych-majoring me one day. She likes doing that. And my mom knew, obviously." He pauses and hesitates. "And I told Ygritte."

The girlfriend. The redhead.

  
"Oh," she says and she's a little sad. Jon and Ygritte must have been close, they must have loved each other. Jon doesn't share his feelings lightly. Sansa had never even considered telling Harry.

"I kinda freaked out at her one night," he says, and she can tell he doesn't really want to be talking about this, but she thinks maybe he needs to. "We were both a little tipsy and we ran out of condoms and she said it was fine and that I could just pull out or something and I kept saying no and she kept _pushing_ and I finally snapped." He's frowning up at the ceiling and she can feel him shutting down. "Ygritte and I... we didn't make each other better."

"Nether did Harry and I," she says and when he looks at her, he's not confused and she correctly guessed that Robb or Arya had mentioned her boyfriend at some point. "I drank a lot that year," she says. "He cheated on me." Jon makes a face and doesn't say anything, but the arm around her waist pulls her tighter to him.

* * *

The next morning they go down to the hotel provided breakfast together and Sansa's more than a little relieved that neither Robb nor her parents are there yet. She's not ashamed of sleeping with Jon last night and she doesn't regret it, but she still doesn't need to face her parents first thing the next morning, walking in hand in hand with Jon and wearing a spare set of his sweatpants and his old Direwolves t-shirt with his name written across the back.

Arya and Margaery are there, both clearly nursing hangovers, and Gendry is piling so much food into his mouth Sansa fears he might choke. Jon sits her down at the table and then goes off and she watches him grab two cups of coffee and he brings them back to the table along with a pile of creamers and sugar packets for her and then he goes back and gets food. He brings her two lemon poppyseed muffins and a pile of bacon and eggs for himself.

_She loves him_.

"Thank you, darling," Margaery drawls and takes some bacon off Jon's plate and he scowls.

* * *

Lyanna is going to drive Jon to the airport and they stop at the Stark house for final goodbyes. He hugs and shakes hands with her family (even Catelyn, stiffly) and when he gets to her, her family seems to back away and start talking among themselves to give her and Jon some privacy.

They haven't talked about what they're going to do now. He's going away for at least another year and who knows where he'll go after that. They haven't talked about it but Sansa thinks they don't need to. Because she thinks that no matter what, they're inevitable.

Because there's a look in his eyes right now that she's seen before, too many times to count. In his Jeep with their breath clouding in the cold air. In the parking lot after the hockey game, telling him she won't be tagging along to celebrate. In the dark of the pool house. In his room, on his bed, curled up and watching Buffy together. Over a tin of Christmas cookies. In the clinic with the florescent bulbs buzzing overhead. In the laundry room, holding hands and standing much too close. Across a party with his girlfriend standing next to him. Right before a hug that lasted just slightly too long. As his fingertips outlined the shape of a bird in flight into her skin. Across an aisle at a wedding. Sharing a lemon poppyseed muffin for breakfast.

She's seen this look before and she accepts it now for what it is. What she had always been too stupid and stubborn to let herself have.

He takes her face in his hands and leans in close so no one but her can hear and says "I love you, Sansa Stark."

She grips both hands into his shirt and sighs and says "I love you too, Jon Snow."

It doesn't matter that he'll be gone for a year. It doesn't matter that they haven't talked about what they are.

They're _inevitable._

* * *

She'd like to say that the next year flies by, but it doesn't.

She and Marg move in together and it's so much more fun than she imagined.

She continues on at work but around October that year, she starts browsing job sites. She loves her dad and Robb but she wants to do something on her own. She has no interest in being a Junior Account Manager and even though she's been doing it for over a year, she can barely even explain what the job _is_.

She finds a listing for a small art gallery in Winterfell looking for a social media manager. She applies just like she's done to dozens of other jobs and doesn't think anything else of it.

When she gets the call for an interview, she paces back and forth across the living room and babbles to Margaery.

"It's a small company and I doubt they'll be able to pay me much but I'd be handling all their social media and helping to run ads for their collections and it sounded like they'd be open to me doing even _more_ , since they're so small and people take on multiple roles."

Margaery tells her to stop panicking and when that doesn't work, she FaceTimes Arya and the two of them talk her down and tell her she's going to kill the interview. And, two days later, she _does_.

The head of the gallery calls her and tells her she has the job and she thanks him politely and then when they hang up she twirls around her apartment until she's out of breath. Then she calls Jon.

He sounds _so proud_ of her. She's proud of _herself_.

She dreads telling dad, but when she goes home for Sunday dinner that weekend, she sits him down in his study and tells him. She's fidgeting with the hem of her shirt and when she looks back up at him, he's smiling at her and he looks proud of her, too.

* * *

The new job keeps her busy.

She wants to do well so she throws herself into the work. Jon encourages her and tells her its fine when they're on the phone and a work call comes through and she has to hang up on him. He doesn't get mad at her for caring.

He can't come back to Winterfell for Christmas because of his job and a final project he's working on (he tells her about it, and she listens and makes what she thinks are the appropriate noises at the appropriate times, but eventually he laughs and says _none of this means anything to you, does it?_ ). She can't go to Old Town because she _just_ started this job and she doesn't want to ask for a vacation yet.

She can wait to see him. She's good at waiting.

* * *

Jon is graduating in two weeks and she still has no idea what he's doing. He's been talking to companies and interviewing but there's no real news and she wonders what he'll do if he doesn't have a job when he does graduate. Will he stay in Old Town? Will he move back home? She has no idea.

Lyanna calls her up and asks if she'd like to go to Jon's graduation ceremony. "I figured he'd be an idiot and not invite you," Lyanna says and Sansa wonders how she even got her number. "He told me he doesn't want to bother you."

Sansa sighs loudly into the phone and Lyanna says _"right?"_

They book tickets together and that's how Sansa finds herself taking a trip with Lyanna Snow. The mother of... her boyfriend? She doesn't know what Jon is to her. They haven't talked about it. But they call each other almost every day and text each other constantly and they're essentially dating except they haven't labeled it. It doesn't matter.

It's not as awkward as it might be and Lyanna is actually _fun_. She has a wild, rebellious vibe to her that Sansa didn't notice as a child or a teenager (or maybe Lyanna had suppressed it when they were young). Lyanna tells her _stories_ and she laughs when Sansa stares at her with wide eyes and Lyanna says "how do you think I ended up pregnant at fifteen?"

Sansa doesn't have an answer to that.

Jon meets them at the airport and his smile splits his face and crinkles the corners of his eyes.

She meets Sam and Gilly and they're wonderful. She thinks Sam is the sweetest man she's ever met and Gilly is adorable.

She meets Ghost and even though Jon has told her and sent pictures, she isn't quite prepared for how _big_ he is now. She spends almost the whole first night playing with him on the floor of Jon's apartment while Jon, Sam, Gilly, and Lyanna talk.

"He reminds me of Lady," she tells Jon, later, remembering her big lovable lab she'd had when she was a kid. Lady had gotten hit by a car and she remembers crying and crying and crying (she even remembers Jon comforting her at one point, awkward arm slung over her shoulders as she sobbed into his shirt).

"He looks nothing like Lady," Jon says with a smile as he kneels down and scratches at Ghost's ear.

"I mean how well behaved he is," she says.

"You haven't seen him when he's in a mood," Jon grins and Gilly calls out agreement from the kitchen and Sam laughs.

The next day is his graduation and she watches him walk and she claps and yells along with Lyanna and Gilly and they do the same when Sam's name is called. Sam's family is there (not his dad and Sansa feels a strange tension there that she doesn't ask about), and Sam and Gilly go out to dinner with Sam's mom and siblings.

Jon, Sansa, and Lyanna go out to their own dinner, and any worries she had that this might be uncomfortable is dispelled early on. It's strange to think that the last time the three of them had been alone in a room together, they had been going over her _options_ and it feels like a lifetime ago.

* * *

Later that night Lyanna yawns loudly and excuses herself back to the hotel, leaving Jon and Sansa alone in his apartment.

"I have news," he tells her when his mom leaves. "I told mom last week but I wanted to wait to see you in person." She waits with baited breath because he's _smiling._ "I took a job in Winterfell."

She launches herself at him and says "thank the gods" and she hugs him fiercely before pulling back and punching him in the shoulder. "Why did you wait this long! I've been _freaking out_."

"Ow," he says, clutching at his shoulder and exaggeratedly making his arm go limp and she punches him again. He laughs and says "you've been hanging out with Arya too much."

* * *

Jon comes home.

After seven long years, he comes home and everything feels right in the world.

He lives with his mom for a little until he can save up enough money for a deposit on an apartment (he does _not_ like living back at home, he tells her. He loves his mom but he really doesn't want to be living with her again).

Robb and Theon help him move in to his new place. It's small, it's nothing fancy, but it's _his_.

Arya is there, too, but she and Sansa mostly sit off to the side and play with Ghost and direct the boys where to put things even though it's Jon's place. Arya makes Gendry help, slapping him on the back and telling him to _get to work, packhorse_.

She's home from Braavos after her own graduation. She's jobless right now and she keeps talking about traveling the world. Sansa will be sad to see her go, but with phones and FaceTime, she thinks she can handle it. Maybe not forever, but for a little. She needs Arya to come back eventually.

Marg shows up when they're mostly done and puts a dramatic hand to her head and says "I thought you said _two_ , not _ten,_ " when Arya points out that she's four hours late.

She absolutely knew what she was doing, but she shows up with bags of Pentoshi food and beer, so they all forgive her.

Hours later, Jon kicks everyone but Sansa out and he pulls her onto the couch and lets out a sigh. "Stay tonight?" he asks and she gives him a smile and tells him she has an overnight bag in her car. Jon nods and then yawns and tells her that if she wants, she can also just keep stuff here.

They decide to watch Buffy. Back in high school, they'd only gotten to around season three and Jon tells her he was never able to watch it on his own because it reminded him of her. She tries to figure out which episode he last remembers and it turns out he remembers almost nothing at all ( _I wasn't really watching, ok? You were always half naked and cuddling me, I was distracted!_ ) so she figures they'll have to start at episode one.

They go to get snacks and bump into each other in the kitchen because it's so small and she laughs and he says "don't worry, our place will be bigger".

"Our place?" she says, raising an eyebrow at him. "I _have_ a roommate, thank you very much."  
  


"Yeah," he shrugs, "I mean when we move in together some day."

"You sound pretty sure of yourself," she says in her best Princess Sansa voice.

He smiles at her and grabs her arm and pulls her against him. "Yeah," he breathes and nudges her nose with his. "You're gonna move in with me. And one day you'll marry me."

"Is that so," she whispers, unable to hold her princess voice. "And I suppose we'll also have children?"

She waits, breathlessly, as he pulls back.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah we will."

They don't say anything else and they go back to the couch and she picks up the remote and they start again from the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not really sure what to say except a huge thank you to everyone who's made it this far. Thank you for reading, for commenting, for kudos. As I've said in other chapters, writing this has been like therapy for me and I hope someone out there, somewhere, gets something out of it. I'm not sure if I'll write anything else, but I really am grateful I was able to write and post this and I'm grateful for the really overwhelmingly positive response I've gotten. I truly appreciate it.
> 
> edit: oh my. onhersleeve made a very beautiful picset for this. I don't know how to put graphics in, so I'll just link it here. Again, I can't stress enough how utterly grateful and overwhelmed I am by the response to this fic. It means a lot to me, you have no idea.
> 
> https://onhersleeve.tumblr.com/post/624583308084477952/


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